


Just getting started

by Archerthewarlock



Series: High school Au [1]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, cause why not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2020-08-10 07:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20131789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archerthewarlock/pseuds/Archerthewarlock
Summary: after his dad gets a promotion requiring him and his family to move, Marcus is forced transfers to a new high school in his second year wear he meets the members of the schools Robotics club. but not everything is what they seem and starts to feel like the very school is working against them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Am I writing a new story when I'm suppose to be working on the persona crossover...yes. sorry but crossovers are hard. anyway, like anyways this wasn't beta read or anything, so sorry about that. we die like warriors here.

Sat Aug 31st, 2:44 pm

Marcus couldn’t really say he was overly pleased with the move, what teenager his age ever was. Having to completely uproot your life, leave your friends behind just to move into a new house, and start at a new school. As if high school wasn’t hard enough, now he had to start from zero once again.

“I know this will be a little hard on you Marcus.” His mom said as she handed him another box that was packed full of his stuff. “But your father worked hard to get this promotion, so we can have a better life.”

“I know.” The teen replied dejectedly; he didn’t blame his parents for any of this. After all his father worked all day in an office building and his mother worked two different retail jobs; and this house, while just as small as their last one, was nice and in a better neighborhood. He just wasn’t happy with the situation, was all. 

“But think of it this way; your friends in Oakland are only a phone call away, and you can always go up for a weekend to see them.” That was his mom, always trying to look on the bright side of things. “And I’m sure you’ll make lots of new friends here too.”

Marcus couldn’t help but smile just a little at the fact she was trying to make him feel better. “Thanks, Mom.” he set down the box full of his things and pulled the woman in for a hug. “I just wish I didn’t have to change schools.”He had only spent a year at his last school, and now in his second year he would have to readjust to a whole new school and layout. He would know where all his classes are, what part of the school to avoid, where all the smokers hung out. He’d have to learn it all again in a year that he was supposed to already know his way around.

“I know, Baby” his mother hugged him back tightly, “But I know you’ll get used to it.” she pulled away slightly and smiled down at him, then turned so she could reach for something on the counter. “Speaking of your new school…” she picked up what looked to be a poorly made flyer and handed it to him. “Looks like they're doing an Orientation Tomorrow for New Students and returning ones.” She smiled. “You should go. Would give you a chance to sort out your classes and get your bearings at the very least. And who knows you might get a meet some of your new classmates.”

Marcus looked down at the paper that was now in his hands, his eyes glossing over the bubble lettered font in the Header and various amount of clip art scattered through the page. It was almost an eye sore to look at.

_ Lebanc High School Orientation _

_ Lebanc high school wishes to welcome to welcome both new and returning students, on Sunday September 1st _

_ 8 am: Doors are open to all registered and registering students to explore the building and meet teachers and fellow students. _

_ 9 am: The Vice Principal will be giving a speech to all new Students in the auditorium. Returning students are welcome to sit in as well. _

_ 10 am: open for early class registration,Open to all students. _

_ 11 am: Club classroom registration. Club presidents and supervising teachers will be registering for the classrooms they will be using during the year. New Clubs are also free to register at this time as well. _

_ 12 pm: Lunch in the cafeteria provided for free by the school. _

_ 1 pm and onward: the school is once more open for exploration of the classrooms, meet and greet with the teachers and students are encouraged to check out some of the clubs our school has to offer _

_We look forward to seeing you there. _

He Looked up from the flyer then to his mother’s smiling face.

It really didn’t sound overly exciting, pretty boring really; aside from the promise of free food. But his mother was giving him a hopeful look. “Sounds like it could be fun.” he gave a forceful smile.

“I’m sure you’ll have a great time.” she gave him a reassuring touch on the shoulder, no doubt seeing right through his fake smile. 

Finally she turned back to the stack of boxes behind her, each one full of kitchen supplies that she had started to unpack. “Now grab your things and hurry over to your room with your stuff and try to get as much unpacked as you can before supper.” his mom gave him a quick smile as she glanced over her shoulder.

Giving him mom a slight nod Marcus gathered some of his boxes, two at a time, and started bringing his things into his New Room.

Really he wasn’t sure about the whole orientation thing. Chances were that it would mostly be him and a bunch of freshmen, any returning students probably wouldn’t be there for long. Just long enough to apply for their classes and leave, or stay just long enough to get something to eat. Anyone who stayed longer was either in a club or looking to join one.

But on the positive side this would, like this mom said, give him a chance to find the school and have a look around before classes started. No wondering the halls aimlessly like he had last year.  
And maybe he might check out some of the clubs. Who knows there might be one that catches his interest.

Opening the door to his room he set down the two boxes he was carrying next to his bed and setting the flyer down on his bedside table.  
Maybe he could join the Newspaper club, or whatever it was called. And help whoever ran it to make more appealing looking flyers; he wasn’t an artist but he was pretty sure he could do a better job.

Marcus turned and left the room to get another set of boxes. Only time would tell if tomorrow would yield anything good. But until the had to finish moving poxes and unpacking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus goes to check out his new school and meets two people.

Sun Sept 1st 8 am

With the help of Nudle maps, Marcus was able to find the school fairly easily.

The high school was a mostly large and square two story building with a tall bell tower built into its side, three sets of doors clearly placed with one on each end of the building and the main doors in the middle. While the building was big it did show clear signs of age, as most of the bricks that made up the outside looked weathered and chipped; and the sign would dictate the events happening was fogged with age. There were also parts of the school were under renovation, no doubt to get new paneling for the sides.

After taking a good look at the outside of the building, Marcus saved the route he took before heading inside.

The lobby was large and looked like it was at one time supposed to be white in colour, leading Marcus to the conclusion that this probably wasn’t going to be one of those high tech schools he had heard about.

Spread across the walls and hung from the ceiling were colourful banners all saying the same thing. “Lebanc High school welcomes all New and Returning students.” in thick cartoonist hand drawn lettering.  
At least they were trying.

But from underneath it all he could just make out the Student services office and the Vice Principal and Principal’s offices sticking out from all the clutter.

All around him, there were various teens of different ages walking around that Marcus was able to put into two groups. First years and Returning Students. 

The ones that were looking about in awe or seemed to be hugging close to the walls looking like lost puppies, he was guessing were the first years; as they made up the majority of the room.While the teens that walked through the halls seeming to know exactly where to go, or quickly finding a group to chat with, those he figured were returning students; those he wasn’t sure what year they were in but it was clear they knew their way around.

Glancing at his phone quickly, he saw that it was a little past eight thirty and figured it might be best to use this time to try and find the Auditorium. He could always people watch later.

Pulling away from the wall he was leaning against Marcus set off on his search.

8:45 am

For such a simple layout the halls made the school feel like a maze, with staircases seemingly littered here and there; it didn’t help that one whole wing of the school was poorly lit and had a strange smell. By the time he found the Auditorium he was pretty sure he had walked through his area three times already.

Really that sign could have been bigger.

“I was wondering when you’d stop and look around.” standing next to the door was a tall teen with skin only slightly darker the Marcus’s own, wearing a nice black polo tee shirt and a pair of blue jeans with a few of his dreadlocks falling in his face.

“And you were going to let me just continue to walk in circles?” Marcus gave the other a slightly annoyed look, this guy could have saved him a lot of time but then again he couldn’t completely blame him; he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have said anything either.

“Only if you had of walked by one more time. Then I might have said something to you.” The other teen smiled and stepped forward to offer his hand. “Names Horatio Carlin.”

At this Marcus smiled and gladly shook the other’s hand “I’m Marcus Holloway.” 

“Pleasure to meet you Marcus” after a few good shakes Horatio reclaims his hand back and took a step back, looking over the other teen. “Just guessing but did you just transfer here?”

“What gave me away?”

Horatio just chuckled at this, “Well your not walking around all wide eyed with the magic of High school.” he leaned against the wall once more as he explained this. “And you seem a little more than lost a moment ago. What year?”

“Second. You?” Marcus answered honestly returning the question.

“This is my third year here.” came the reply from the other teen. “I’m also on the student council. I’m the rep for the Robotics club.”

“There’s a Robotics club?” Now this peaked his interest. From what he had seen of the school Marcus would never have guessed that there was a Robotics club of any kind. “You are you like the president of this club or what?”

“Nah, man. That role belongs to a whole different guy.” Horatio almost seemed to laugh at this. “I just handle the more political bits, events, funding and stuff like that.” Carlin explained to the other teen. “It’s pretty small, I think they only have four members right now. But it requires you to take Mr Kenny’s computer programming course.” he gave Marcus a look over. “Why are you interested in joining?”

“I’ll think about it.” there wasn’t much to think about it, the idea of building robots and programming things was pretty exciting to him. He remembered when he used to take his toys apart and put them back together again. 

The smile on Horatio’s face spread wider and he lightly punched Marcus in the arm. “Then I’ll put in a good word for you with The Wrench. See if I can’t point him in your direction.” grinning he stepped back towards the door once more. “I’m pretty sure he was hoping to grab some fresh meat.”

“Wait, hold up...Wrench?” There was a guy here named The Wrench? Was that a nickname or a birth name? Either way it made the guy sound like some thug in a gang. You know The Wrench the big muscled silent guy standing in the back that was could snap your neck between his fingers. 

_ “All New Students, Please proceed to the Auditorium for the Vice Principal's speech.” _a female voice came over the PA, broadcasting the message throughout the halls.

“This way.” The third year pushed open the door he had been standing next to the whole time, holding it open for Marcus to follow him inside. Marcus followed him inside, and as he came up to the stage the older teen turned back to him. “Was nice talking to you Marcus, if you get into the Robotics Club maybe I'll see you around.” with that he turned and walked up onto the stage.

The Auditorium was large with a sloping seating arrangement that made Marcus think of an old style movie theater; it even had a large stage at the front with plenty of room to walk around on before anyone even hit the curtains.

He noticed a few other Students starting to filter in, most of them looking completely lost or in awe as they were before. The majority of them taking seats in the front rows; yet Marcus could see a few students making their way to the back as well.

Rather than be counted among the others Marcus chose to take a seat in the middle aisle, so that he wasn’t too close or too far away from the stage.

\-------

10:45 am

When Horatio had mentioned Wrench to him his mind had pictured some large and intimidating looking Teen who might have belonged to a street gang.

What he got was someone he had a hard time explaining.

When he had walked away from the student service desk, his plan had been to explore the school and try and find all his classes so he wouldn’t be scrambling when school started.

Marcus headed down one of adjacent halls looking at the numbers on the door carefully when he started to feel like he was being followed. Writing it off as just a bit of nervousness at not knowing the school that well, he continued on his way. 

This turned out to be a mistake...as the moment the hallway became barren of other bodies the only warning he got was a shadow falling over him before a bag was quickly pulled over his head. With no time to fight back the person pushed him through a door and pushed him to his knees.

Marcus could feel his heart pounding in his ears as he had no clue what was or was about to happen, and when the bag was pulled free from his head he almost felt like the organ would stop all together. He was in a darkened classroom, he knew this as he could just make out the teachers desk and a chalkboard in the back.

_ “I’m going to ask you three questions. depending on what your answers are, will determine what happens next.” _ The voice that spoke from behind him was heavily modulated causing it to have an almost robotic tone to it, the most he could tell about it was that it belonged to a male.

As much as Marcus wanted to turn around and confront this person, his frantic mind told him it was a bad idea to do so.

_ “What are your thoughts on Blume? What’s your favorite Siska movie? And R2 or Data?” _

His mind came to a screeching halt. Those were not the kind of questions he was expecting, he really didn’t know what he had been expecting but it wasn’t that. So it took him a minute or two to make any kind of noise.

_ “Well?” _

This guy seemed like he was getting a little impatient.

His thoughts on Blume, he didn’t really like to think about the company much; just the thought of what they could do was creepy. “Blume kinda freaks me out, you know. Big brother and shit.”

Marcus moved his hands a bit and realized that nothing was binding him at all. He was free to move around, he had just been so freaked out before that he hadn’t realized it. Knowing this he felt more relaxed, it also helped that next question was more in his comfort zone. “As for my favorite Siska film… Gotta go with Open Wound. The Film is a work of art.”

“_ Yes” _ it was quiet but Marcus just managed to hear the person behind him whisper this.

“As for R2 or Data?” Now he stood, he was pretty sure he knew what this was about; though this seemed to be a weird way to initiate someone into a club. “Well you can’t really compare the two. R2, while having a lot of personality and is called a droid, is technically a Robot. Data on the other hand is an Android he’s more complex. But if I have to pick one...I’d have to go with Data, Dudes got a sweet best bud in Geordi; those two solve just about every problem. Luke does most of the work between R2 and him.”

He heard a shifting of cloth and Marcus turned to look over his shoulder just slightly. “So...Am I in?”

_ “Dude, you were in the moment Ratio texted me about you.” _ came the answer. _ “I just wanted to see what you’d do under a bit of pressure.” _

“A bit of Pressure? man you-” Marcus turned to face the other to try and give him a piece of his mind but was caught off guard.He had expected to see the guy’s face, any face really, maybe with something covering his mouth at least. but what he saw instead was a heavily graffiti welding mask in its place with Xs painted where the eyes should be and a jagged smile replacing the mouth. “...Scared the crap out of me.” after a slight pause the words trickled out.

_ “Yeah, I’m told I do that sometimes.I like to make a first impressions that’ll last.” _ The other male just shrugged. _ “Would you believe I made those questions up on the spot. It’s amazing what you can do with a McDonald bag and a dark room. Just didn’t know what to do with you once I got you.” _

since his face was covered and his voice was modulated Marcus was finding it slightly harder to tell the guy’s mood, relying only on the body language of someone he just met was harder than he thought it would be. “Yeah, I can believe that.” from what he could tell the other guy seemed to be relaxed. “I’m guessing your Wrench? The president of the Robotics Club?” 

_ “The one and Only.” _ The masked teen gave an exaggerated bow at this, before righting himself again. _ “But we don’t use the word President, makes me feel all weird and gross. I prefer chief Engineer, well I wanted Master of Destruction but the others said that was a bit counter productive to what we were doing, so yeah That’s me.” _

Marcus took this catch to look over the Club leader. Images of the big gang worthy thug seemed to fade away. Aside from the pale arms sticking out of the rolled up sleeves and the skin that was peeking out from the torn jeans, the guy looked like a walking pile of clothes. He couldn’t even make out hair because of the mask and the hood he had pulled over his head. Wrench seemed to be a scrawny pale teen who seemed to be playing on the line between Weird and slightly insane.

There was still the possibility he was in a gang though.

_ “There something on my face?” _ Apparently he had been staring for too long and Wrench had noticed. _ “I know the welding mask is a little off putting, I am working on something better it’s just got a lot of kinks to it.” _

“No, No, it’s not that, sorry.” Marcus shook his head to try and clear his thoughts. “So, Like I’m in the club right?” he just needed that little bit of confirmation. “The Robotics Club, right?”

_ “Yeah-Pretty sure I said that dude.” _

That was all he needed. Marcus clapped his hands and pumped his fist in the air. “Yes. Okay so what’s our first project?” he almost couldn’t wait to get started, he had heard about Robotics clubs in other schools always working on some of the coolest projects and sadly his last school didn’t have one.

_ “Well…” _ at this Wrench’s shoulders seemed to drop a bit. “ _ I don’t really...have a project right now.” _ he rubbed at the back of his hooded head head. “ _ I mean I’ve been helping one of our members build a big ass drone, but it’s not really a ‘Club’ project and the school doesn’t have a spot for use to store something that big.” _ one arm reached over and grabbed hold of the other, showing signs a bit of stress. _ “Been trying to think of something that everyone can work on but it’s hard you know. Last year we did like mini-fighting robots, but I had to fight with most of them just to get them to stay one the project. They were mostly third years though, Just thankful their gone.” _ something else was muttered but it was garbled through the modulator.

While Marcus was disappointed to hear that there wasn’t anything planned yet, he could understand the stress the other teen might have been under. Trying to find something they could all work on by the 5th and then making sure people remained focused on it. Sounded like managing this club was a bit harder then he had thought. “Well, Maybe I can help you out?”

_ “You’d do that?” _ at this Wrench seemed surprised, like no one had ever offered to help him with something like this. 

“Sure, I’m full of ideas. And between the two of us we should be able to come up with something by the fifth.” He wasn’t sure how much help he could be in such a short time but two heads had to be better than one. Besides he wanted to work on something awesome while he was in this club, and if he did nothing to help chances were it wasn’t going to happen. “You want my Discord? So I can get a hold of you if I think of something. You use Discord, right?”

The Masked Teen didn’t need to be asked twice as pulled out his phone. “_ Of course _ ,” they exchanged info and by the time they were done Wrench had draped an arm around Marcus’s shoulders, shoving his phone back into his pocket. _ “Now to show how grateful I am for not only for your help but for finally having another Siska fan in the club. please allow me to take you on a one in a lifetime Wrench guided tour of the School and then buy you lunch at the cafeteria.” _

Marcus smiled and allowed Wrench to guide him outside the classroom he had dragged him into. “I appreciate it, a tour and lunch would be nice. But don’t be expecting something on a first date.” he joked, grinning as the other laughed. then Something clicked. “Wait, isn’t the school paying for lunch at the cafeteria?”

_ “Pfff- Details.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I based the school on the one I went too when I was in high school which was pretty old, there was even a wing of the school people called the dungeon cause it had bad lighting and smelled like mildew.  
once more sorry about any mistakes in grammar and spelling. 
> 
> Thanks to those who left Kudos, It really means a lot. I'll try not to disappoint.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus thinks he may have found a project for the club to work on for part of the year. he runs it pass Wrench to see what he thinks.

While their meeting had been shaky at best, Wrench turned from being the weirdo in charge of the Robotics club into pretty much best friend material within minutes. Once you got pass the welding mask and rough exterior. 

He wasn’t really someone Marcus thought he would ever hang out with, but as they talked he realized how compatible they were. Wrench had a bit of a crud charm to him that was enough to make Marcus at least smile even when he was rolling his eyes, and it made it easy for him to slip in and add to the joke as well.

It probably also helped that Wrench seemed to take all of his suggestions into account when he recommended something for the club. He would either straight up tell him that he didn’t like it or tell him why it wouldn’t work for the club.

_ “We did kind of a remote control robot thing before...well some of us did. But then one of the others stole it and used it to put cameras in the girl’s locker room.” _ Wrench was once more sadly turning down another idea over their voice chat. _ “We almost lost the club then and there. So I don’t think we’ll be allowed to do that again. Sucks.” _

“Last year sounded really rough.” Marcus commented, most of his ideas had been turned down mostly because of something that happened the year before. From the sound of it The members last year either wouldn’t help on a project or would ruin it for everyone.

“_ Yeah, try being a first year telling a bunch of third years what to do. If it hadn’t of been for Sitara, I might have given up...or gone Ape shit. One or the other.” _ Wrench sighed on the other end.This hadn’t been the first time he had brought up this Sitara person, from the sounds of it she was a good friend of his; more of an artist than an engineer or programmer but still crazy smart. Marcus was looking forward to meeting her. _ “Anywho, I’m gonna try to keep the club fairly small this year. Might be a little easier to handle.” _

“Yeah, give yourself a chance to work on the projects as well, rather than having to worry about the slackers.” He was kind of glad that he missed the last year, while the projects sounded cool he couldn’t imagine his first year deal with half the things things Wrench had mentioned. “I’m just glad I missed those guys, though it sucks I didn’t get a chance to see some of the stuff you guys built.”

_ “You can stop by the garage sometime after school. I managed to save a jumper and a drone from last year you can check out.” _ The other suggested, he had mentioned the garage before as well. It was apparently some abandoned garage that they had managed to pull together enough money to buy; keeping projects there to work on outside of the club. How they managed to do that? he wasn’t sure if he’d ever know.

“Sounds like a plan.” Despite knowing Wrench couldn’t see him, Marcus still smiled at the screen.

as a silence fell between the two, Marcus grunted tiredly as he pushed his laptop further out on his bed so he could lay on his stomach. Popping open his Nudle browser and going onto y-tube, he started up the first video he found as he tried to think of another idea they could do. He needed distraction in order to think of something good, he was hoping that over the course of the video something might come to him. And he was pretty sure Wrench was doing the same thing.

Really he wasn’t paying too much attention to what was on the screen, only after five minutes into a video when an ad started to play did he really paying attention.

The ad that was playing looked to be some kind of movie trailer for one of the many films that were in production this year. One that Marcus was looking forward too despite the fact it sounded like some cheesy rewrite of an old Tv show. He’d probably seen the trailer about ten times already, he was looking forward to the new trailer that would have footage from the movie.

“I can’t wait to see the New CyberDriver movie.” Marcus voiced his thoughts as he paused the ad and clicked on the link. There hadn’t been a link before, maybe they finally got a web page up.

_ “I know right. It’s going to be awesome.” _ Wrench replied clearly just as excited as he was. _ “Well as awesome as a New Dawn Siska movie can be.” _ there was a sigh. _ “So disappointed in that.” _

“I know, right.” Marcus just shook his head, The past few Jimmy Siska movies just hadn’t been as good as they use to be and it all seemed to happen around the same time he joined New Dawn.  
He looked back at the web page he had just loaded up, it was a pretty typical movie website with a large picture of the lead actor in striking pose and the current movie trailer playing off to the side. Scrolling down looking for anything of interest about the movie, a few hits about the plot but nothing major. But there was one thing that caught his eye.

**\--Create the Cyberdriver car contest**

**Get your school involved in the creation of the iconic cyberdriver car, and have a chance at having your car in the movie as well as a cash prize of over 10,000 dollars.** **  
** **All cars must be remote controlled in some fashion, and have automated responses.**

**Car will be tested for handling, speed, tech, and control.**

**Cars will not be provided.**

“Wrench!” he hadn’t really meant to yell, but he wanted to assure he had the other’s attention.

_ “Marcus! _” of course Wrench returned the yell which was made louder by the voice modulator he used.

Quickly Marcus copied the URL and placed it in the Discord chat and sent it to his friend. “Check this out. Scroll down.”

There was a moment of pause and he could hear the teen’s mouse wheel turning quickly_ . “Holy Shit, Marcus- _” the other didn’t even finish his sentence, trailing off as he read over the details.

“Think that could be a project the club can work on over the year?” Marcus asked, he hoped that maybe there was a yes somewhere; though he knew there were a lot of holes that could lead to a No. “I mean we’d need a car and some place to keep the car.” that was probably wasn’t helping his case but he still had hope.

_ “I could probably find one at the junkyard, it be pretty beat up.” _ It seemed Wrench was pretty much sold on the idea. _ “The teachers might let us use a parking spot out back, maybe.” _ he could hear a bit of doubt in the other’s voice. _ “I need to talk to Horatio, He can talk to the student council and principle.” _

Marcus heard the sound of shifting on a bed and headphones being moved over the channel, he took a guess and assumed that Wrench had stood up from his bed._ “Ugh. I wanna do this so bad! Why M! Why are you doing this to me?” _ the voice was distance yet still near enough for him to hear the masked teen.

“Sorry, Man.” Marcus smiled, not really sure if Wrench could hear him or not. Though he could understand the other’s frustration.

He heard the other walk back over to his laptop and heard the headphones once more being moved. _ “damn it, I can’t stay mad at you.” _ Wrench let out an exaggerated sigh. _ “But I’ll message Horatio tonight, with any luck we’ll be allowed to do the project. But we’ll keep looking for other ideas. _” 

“Hopefully we’ll hear something back before the first meet up on Thursday.” Marcus really didn’t envy Horatio’s job at this point, trying to act as a negotiator between a few different parties. While he hoped for a quick answer he wasn’t about to hold his breath.

_ “Even if we do get a yes, I still have to sell it to the others.” _

“Well I can help you out with that.” He was pretty good with people when it came to, he was pretty sure he could convince them.

“Marcus! Supper?”

Marcus looked up and away from the computer as a female voice called his name from down the hall.

“Sorry, man. Sounds like supper’s ready.” Marcus apologized to his friend, he was starting to get hungry any. 

_ “The call of Food. like the call of the wild only a bit more Food and has nothing to do with Wild.” _ Wrench joked but it seemed that he was getting hungry as well. _ “But I should probably make something for myself as well. Maybe order out. I don’t know if I'll see what’s in the freezer.” _

Marcus raised an eyebrow at this, every-time he spoke to the other teen he always seemed to be alone. Did his parents really work that much. But he didn’t really want to pry into the other’s life, at least not at this moment.“Alright dude, take care of yourself.” 

_ “You too, man.” _ With that Wrench left the voice channel with a click and soon Marcus did the same.

“Marcus! Second warning!” his mother yelled again.

“I’m coming mom!” he called back, pulling his head phones from his head and hurried down the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ones a bit shorter then the others, but I wanted to get at least one chapter in before they were in school.  
Thanks again for the Kudos and bookmark guys.  
I'll try not to disappoint you guys.  
and sorry for any spelling or Grammar mistakes


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus has his first class at his new school, and the robotics club gets some good and bad news

**Sept thrus 5**

The first day of school was always stressful. While the orientation did help with a few things like knowing where the classrooms were, there was still always that feeling of stress. No one wanted to be late to their first class so the hallway was always crowded, and the last thing Marcus wanted to do was make a bad first impression on his teacher and classmates.

Lucky for him, his first class was the computer programming course Horatio recommended he take. 

Wrench had explained it a bit before hand, there were in fact two classes that could be taken to meet the requirements for the club. Basic Computer Sciences with Mr Frewer which was a first year class, and advanced Computer programming with Mr Kenny which was a second year class. And the reason for it being required was because those two teachers supervised the club, and they wanted to make sure the students knew what they were doing.

Wrench had also informed him that most of the second years in the club were taking this exact course, including himself. And Marcus wanted to make a good impression, he just hoped some of them were in the same block as he was.

Upon entering the classroom he quickly found a seat at one of the many computers in the room and watched as the other students filter in; wondering which one of them might be his club-mates. He at least hoped to see Wrench since Horatio already took the class.

As the second bell rang and an adult followed the last of the students and shut the door. While it could be assumed that this guy was a teacher by his age, his outfit said that he was anything but. Long shaggy grey beard and hair, a baseball hat with a pair of goggles on it, a pair of ripped up jeans; the nicest thing on him was a dirty black polo shirt but even that had another shirt under it. 

“Alright you little shits, settle down.” The Adult shouted over the noise of the students and as he waited for them to listen he picked up a whiteboard marker and started writing something on the board.Marcus was just impressed that the man had just called them all little shits, he knew a lot of high school teachers probably thought it but how many would say it knowing that parents might come back at them. Once everyone calmed down the man spoke once again. “Alright, I’m Raymond Kenny, I don’t wanna hear any Mr. Kenny in this room though. Only around other teachers are any of you to call me that. In here it’s Ray. Got that.”

He was met with silence; Which seemed to be enough of an answer for him as he picked up a clip board. “Just gonna go through roll call right quick. Just say ‘here’ when I get to your name:  
Ann-Merie Preece”

“Here!”

Marcus looked around the room trying to spot some of his fellow classmates so he could pin a name to a person. Since this was the second year class he assumed that most people here were at least in the same year as him. he was guessing that most of them weren’t club members since Wrench had tossed a few names at him but so far none of the names seemed matched. 

“JB Markowicz”

Until now. That had been a name he recognized from one of his many chats with the masked Teen, though Wrench had only used the name in a passing. 

“Right in front of you, old man.” came the reply, Marcus looked around quickly and saw a teen sitting close to the front with blue dyed hair and a black hoodie with the word ‘defalt’ printed on it. He had to admit the other had that Teenage heart throb look to him, not that Marcus thought much of pretty boys. He was the first to admit he was attracted to both genders, but pretty boy’s never really did anything for him.

“Didn’t recognize you without your mouse ears on.” Mr Kenny, or Ray didn’t even look up from the clipboard as he continued on with the names. “Josh Sauchak.”

That was another name Marcus had heard before from the Masked Teen. 

“Here.” Sitting not to far away from JB was a young Teen in a green hoodie and a light coloured button up shirt. Wrench had told him a bit about this guy, mostly about how he liked to tease the guy at times but also told him that he was skilled engineer himself; working more in software while Wrench worked Hardware. He was the one who had the giant drone he and Wrench was working on.

“Good to see you again, son.” Ray have the boy a nod before moving on. “Marcus Holloway.”

This almost caused him to jump out of his skin as he had been so caught up in check on the other students that he forgot that his own name was coming up on the listen. “H-here.”

Ray looked over at him as he spoke, making eye contact. “So your the new member I’ve been hearing so much about.”

At this Marcus remained quiet, not sure how to respond to all that. He saw Josh and JB look back at him at the mention of a new member. He wondered if it was Horatio or Wrench that had been talking about him. Maybe both.

Ray continued on with his list of names and Marcus looked over at the two teens looking over at him. Josh only gave him a glance before turning back but JB looked to be sizing him up for a good few minutes before smirking and turning around. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Reginald Willaims.” Ray called out and Marcus only snapped back to reality that this was the second time the name had been called out. Ray looked up from his clipboard and looked around the room. “Are you kidding me, out of everyone here I freakin-”The older man was cut off by the sound of a knock on the classroom door and he lets out a growl as he walked over and opened it, pulling the student that had been on the other side into the room. “Well I’ll give you props for being fashionably late and showing up just as I called your name, but really being late on the first day?” While Ray looked annoyed his words came out softly. “Go take a seat. Think there’s one left next to Marcus.”

Marcus had been trying to lean out as far as he could to try and get a look at this new comer but couldn’t really get a good look at the person until he started coming towards him. The guy was scrawny, really scrawny and pale, it was almost unhealthy; his clothes were basically just hanging off of him. Based on that alone he might have thought that this was Wrench without his welding mask, the build did fit after all; but the way the guy moved was all wrong. This guy walked hunched over, looking more at the ground then in front of him. It was as if he didn’t want anyone to see him and clutching the strap to his bag as it was a life line. 

Because of his head was facing downward as he passed by him, he wasn’t able to see to much of the other’s face, but from what he could see the guy was pretty cute in his opinion. He had dirty blonde hair that seemed to have that bed-head messiness to it, icy blue eyes, and a slightly hooked nose; but the most noticeable spot was a large red mark that hung over his left eye and the upper part of that side of this face.

Quickly the guy pulled out the chair next to him sat down and Marcus turned to smile at him. 

“Sup, dude. I’m Marcus.” he smiled at the teen next to him, figuring he might as well be friendly to the person he’d be sitting next to for the rest of the year.

The other teen just gave him a long and almost confused look before he replied. “R-Reg.” his voice was quiet with a slightly wavering tone it like he wasn’t comfortable with talking, and his body practically radiated anxiety. 

“Alright!” all eyes turned towards the teacher once more. “Since this is everyone's first day, I’ve got a little assignment for you all to get you all started. Just a little ‘get-to-know-you-assignments’.” Ray picked up a stack of papers and handed them to Josh, who took one and passed it over. “now all your passwords have been reset from last year...because of security reasons. So as your started up your computers I’ll come around and give you your new logins, then start working on your assignments.” 

Marcus reached down and booted up the old computer, and took the assignment paper as it came around passing it to Reg. slowly Ray came around and handed each student a slip of paper before moving onto the next. When his computer finally got to it’s login screen Ray handed him his login in and Marcus looked at it and then his assignment. 

**-login into the computer and your email and send an Email to TobiasFrewer@Lebanc.com containing your password.-**

An odd assignment, why would they want to send their passwords to the teacher of the other course, it sat weirdly with him. Still he logged in to the computer and then to his email but then paused. He glanced around, the person to his right was just doing the assignment but when he looked over to Reg he was placing an attachment in the link of the email, no text or anything, before he hit send.

“D-Don’t let the assignment trick you. Th-there’s more to it than you think.” He heard Reg whisper over to him.

To this Marcus nodded and read over the assignment paper again and thought about it. If he had gotten this in an email he probably would have changed his password then and there, maybe even tried his hand at making a virus to put into the reply email.

Maybe that’s what Reg meant. 

Opening his account settings he quickly changed his password and then set an email to the address with nothing more than a gif of Rick Ashtley.

“Everyone send their emails?” Ray called out and heard a bunch of mutters confirming this fact. “Good! Now lets see how many of you passed.”

Most of the others in the class just looked around in confusion, not sure how anyone could fail such an easy assignment.

The teacher took out his phone and tapped it a few times. Then looked back at the class. “Looks like most of you failed this particular assignment.” everyone looked around at each other. “So I’ll just call out the names of the people who did pass. Jay. Josh. JB. Marcus. Seth. Sean. And Reg.” he looked around at everyone else. “The rest of you failed the very basics of internet security. Don’t give your personal information to anyone.”He walked back over to the white board and once more picked up the marker. “In this class we will be going over Security, Algorithms, Networks, and Programming and Coding. If you can’t figure out the basics then get out.” he tossed down the marker and then pointed to the door.

No one got out of their seats, but a lot of people in the classroom looked about embarrassed for failing the first assignment and glaring at the few that passed.

“Now...let's get started.” Ray turned back to the white board and started to write on it.

Marcus turned back to look at Reg who was looking more at his computer screen then anything else around him. 

“Hey, Reg.” he tried to get the other teen’s attention.

“Yeah?” the other looked at him, his face looking more tired than any Teen should look.

“Thanks for the advice, I might have ended up on the idiot list without it.” Marcus thanked the other teen, sure he would have figured it out but it was nice knowing someone had his back.

“You would have gotten it even without my help.” Reg looked away quickly.

“Yeah, but it was nice of you too offer it anyway.” He smiled, he was just being nice; he wasn’t flirting, no totally not flirting.

\------

The moment the last bell rang signaling that school was over for the day, he headed towards the boy’s bathroom as quickly as his legs could carry him. It wasn’t that he had to go that badly, it was just he didn’t want to be late...again. At least not the first club meeting of the year, but he had to get changed first and the only place he could do that was the boy’s bathrooms.

Upon entering he checked to make sure he was alone before setting his stuff on the counter next to the sinks and locking the door.

The first order of business was...well taking care of business since he was here. He hurried over to one of the stalls, sure he could use a urinal but just the thought of using one of them in a public bathroom made him almost gag on his own anxiety, at least so long as he didn't have his mask on and he wasn't about to risk getting the it's insides wet. A few seconds later he was washing and drying his hands.

Second order of business was pulling on the hoodie in his bag, it had been slightly too hot to wear to his classes but now that he was heading to the club he wanted it on. The club room tended to be rather cold when it came to the air conditioning, besides the hood covered most of his head and enough people today had seen that for his liking. Pulling it free from everything he kept in his bag he hurriedly pulled in one over the baggy band tee he had been wearing.

Now for the main part.

Reaching into his bag on more time he pulled out the welding mask he so often wore. He loved the thing dearly but even he had to admit the thing was a pain in the ass. It was big, clunky and not to mention made his bag heavier when it was combined with the binders and textbooks he had in there. It also restricted his view greatly. But it did its job of covering his face, and with the voice modulator he had made it hid his voice as well. 

But hopefully he would be able to finish his new mask and then he could just hang this one on his wall at home. 

Placing the mask on his face and flipping the visor down, Wrench let out a sigh of relief that sounded like static through the modulator. Taking on last look in the mirror to make sure it was on straight, he flipped his hood over his blonde head and grabbed his now lighter bag; head started heading towards the club-room. 

It really wasn’t that far from where he had been before, he could already see Ray standing outside the door waiting for everyone to get inside. He just hoped Marcus would find the place okay.

Suddenly Wrench felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and seen it was from Horatio. Damn he was in a student council meeting with the teachers. He’d have to start without him, which sucked because now he would have to do that whole ‘Welcome back’ speech himself. Great.

Pocketing his phone he jogged the rest of the way to the room.

“First your late to my class now your own club meeting.” Ray commented as he got to the door. 

_ “Yeah, yeah. Let it go old man I was only a few minutes late.” _ Wrench just sighed and pushing passed the old man as he walked into the room. Everyone but Horatio was there, even Marcus was there...damn it he was late. _ “Hey Guys! _ ” he called out causing everyone to look up at him, this would be so much harder if he didn’t have his mask. _ “Sorry I’m late.” _

“We were all wondering when you’d finally get here.” Sitara smiled as she teased him from her spot in the middle work area. 

_ “Fuck you, Sitara. I’m not that late.” _ he glared at her from behind his mask as he placed his stuff on the table that had been moved to the front of the room, the one everyone called the Wrench Bench. 

“Language. Please” Wrench looked over and finally noticed Mr. Frewer nervously sitting at the teacher's desk. 

“Yeah...watch your fucking language you little shits.” Ray choose to add only causing Frewer to glare at him from across the room. He could watch those two go at it all day but sadly he had things to do.

_ “Besides, I’m not nearly as late Horatio’s going to be, so let's get this over with.” _ He clapped his hands getting himself ready. _ “Welcome back to the Robotics Club everyone… _ ” his mind suddenly went blank and he was mentally kicking himself for that first line. Even with the mask it wasn’t easy, he’d be throwing up in the corner trying to do this without it. He spotted Marcus again and suddenly found his tongue. _ “As you can all see, unless you went blind over the summer, we have a new Club member.” _

Luckily Marcus seemed to take this as his cue to stand up and look around at everyone else. “Hey guys, I’m Marcus. Think I have a class with most of you and I’m looking forward to working with you here.”

This pause was enough to allow him to relax a bit as he walked up behind March and wrapped his arm around his shoulders. _ “So yeah, this is Marcus. Horatio found this poor clubless soul wandering the halls on Sunday and brought him to me.” _ Okay now Marcus was giving him a look. _ “But really guys, he super cool and I think he’s got some good ideas he can toss our way. Which is something we really need.” _ Now it was time to address last year. _ “But I don’t think we’ll be seeing too many New members, not after what happened last year. You all remember Lenni and her friends. Yeah. we’re gonna try to keep it small this year. _”But really how could anyone forget about Lenni, he could already see Josh shivering involuntarily in his seat at just the mention of her name. He was sure a few of them still had nightmares about her and her gang of monkeys.

**_“Get to the point, Freak.”_** Wrench’s shoulders shagged a little bit when he heard JB speak up from under his own mask where he had been sitting. sometimes he regretted helping him make that mask rather then working on his own, talk about a thankless job. **_“What’s the project for this year? If you even have one.”_**

Of course Rat boy would be trying to drag that out of him. “_ Okay, calm down Beyonce. The main project we’ve come up with, is to enter the Cyberdriver contest.” _ he explained, his body going tense as he waited for the back lash. _ “Basically we would me making giant remote control car with voice line, moving lights and the works.” _ watched as Josh opened his mouth and quickly rushed to get a head of him. _ “But nothing has been confirmed yet and I’m hoping to hear from Horatio on that soon.” _

He paused and waited for everyone to tell him this was a dumb idea. Luckily Marcus, his fateful back-up man of the past five days spoke up. “Look if we get this, then this would be a great chance for our club to really show off for both our school and the public. Not to mention that cash prize could get our club a lot of nice gear that other schools already have.” Thank god Marcus seemed to have good way with his words, he guessed that someone in the club had to be.

He let Marcus carry on for a bit, but ended up looking down at his phone when he felt it buzz again. It was Horatio again.

-**Need to talk.**

Wrench looked towards the door and noticed the third grader waiting for him just outside the door.

_ “I’ll be right back.” _ He excused himself looking around the room, then back at Marcus. _ “Keep going dude, your on a roll.” _ and then headed for the door.

Once the door clicked behind him he looked over at Horatio. _ “Dude, what’s up?” _

He watched as Horatio took a deep breath in and then signed it out. “Okay I got good News and I got bad news.” 

This had him a little worried, Good News was always great on it’s own, it’s what got him...them Marcus. But when it was followed up by Bad News it kind of negated the whole good part of the News. he motioned for Horatio to continue not willing to pick which one he would hear first.

“Good News is. The Project has been approved.” The third grader smiled and gave him a double thumbs up. Though it was still a nervous smile. “Principal and vice principal think it's a great idea and their willing to let you guys have one of the empty parking spots.”

If he wasn’t wearing a mask, Horatio would have seen his eyes light up at that News, though he probably saw him straight up a bit. that was great News, it meant that they had a project. “That’s perfect! Common lets go tell the others.” Wrench turned and started to open the door once more but Horatio caught him.

“But!” Oh god no, not a big old but. They were the worse. No one liked big old buts but old people and Killjoys. 

“_ But?” _ Wrench urged the other to continue.

“But, they want to have some kind of working version by December 12th.” Horatio finally finished looking like he had just told Wrench he drank the last of the milk in the fridge after the engineer had just made himself a cup of coffee. “You have to at least be able to drive it remotely by then...or they’ll pull their support.”  
Wrench reached up and placed a hand on his mask, that was one hell of a deadline to give them. They might be able to do it...he hoped they could. _ “Well...lets go tell them the News I guess.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit longer then the last one. so I hope that's okay.  
I put a few hints here and there of the future ship, but like the story it will be a bit of a slow burn.  
once again I hope you all enjoy it and sorry for any grammar and Spelling mistake, I do try to fix as many as I can find in post.  
also slight point of view change. thought I'd change point of view every so often.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrench gets home after finding a car for the club

**Sept 8th, Sunday**

Wrench flopped on his bed exhausted from the day’s work. It had taken him almost all weekend but he had finally gotten his hands on a car, it was even the correct make. 

It hadn’t been easy due to the fact that the contest had a cash prize and a movie spot, so pretty much every school with a robotics club or class had probably scooped up any cars like it they could get their hands on. The one he had managed to get his hands on had been in a junkyard in line for a car crusher. He had managed to convince the owner of the junkyard to give it to him for a few bucks out of his father’s account, he could almost hear his old man screaming at him for it while he was behind bars. the man had even offered to tow it to the school. And tow it to the school he did, exactly outside the school leaving the teen to push it all the way to the parking spot they had been given; which had been around back.

The car itself was a piece of crap and leaked oil like a sieve. He had to run back to his garage to get his welding tools just to patch up some of the holes. 

He was pretty sure sure he reeked of motor oil.

And so he lay on his bed, blue eyes staring lazily at the ceiling as his welding mask was lying somewhere in the room. He could remember where he tossed it.

Wrench let out a slight grunt as he felt his stomach protest at being empty for so long. “Fuck I’m hungry.” he muttered, yet still he lay on his bed not moving for a few more minutes. “Guess if I don’t make something, no one else will.” which was a true enough fact, as he was the only one living in this place. Slowly the teen pulled himself back to his feet and started to head into his kitchen.

Almost 30 minutes later he returned with a bowl full of pizza bits, only to hear Marcus’s voice coming through his Laptop.

“Yo Wrench. you there, man?” he could hear his friend calling through his speakers. 

Shit! he must have forgotten to leave the voice chat. 

Quickly he looked around for his mask only to remember that he had tossed it on the couch when he came in, so it was down stairs. Plan b then.

“I can hear someone moving around. Wrench, do you have a dog and not tell me?” Marcus continued, no doubt hearing him search for his mask.

Grabbing something off his desk he sat down on his bed and held it to his face._ “No, I don’t have a dog, M. My house is an animal free zone.” _ he spoke as clearly as he could as he set down his bowl and tried to do up the strap behind his head. 

“There you are man, about time. Was starting to think I was just talking to myself.” He could almost hear the smile in the other’s voice. “You sound a bit different.”

_ “Probably because I’m trying out the new voice modulator for my new mask.” _ he’d been wanting to try it out for a long time just to make sure it worked, but with it being only the bottom part of the mask he didn’t want to go out with half of his face exposed. 

“Well it sounds really good, man. Sounds clearer than your welding mask”

_ “Thanks M.” _ Wrench was trying to adjust the leather so it fit better over his face all the while trying to avoid the spikes coming out of the front of the mask. _ “So what’s up? You calling to say hi or did you need something?” _He wasn’t trying to tell Marcus to leave him alone, no he loved talking to the guy; but he was really hungry and couldn’t talk and eat in this thing. maybe if he got Marcus talking about something he could grab a few bits. He’d have to learn to eat with it on at some point.

“Oh nothing much, just something I wanna ask you and I saw you were online…” The other teen trailed off. “So how’d the car search go?”

Damn it Marcus. _ “Pretty good, I mean I got one. It’ll be waiting for use tomorrow.” _ he answered as he rotated his shoulder. _ “Had to push it all the way to the parking spot, but it’s waiting for us on Monday.” _

“Damn dude, should have called me. I would have come to help you out.” Marcus almost sounded insulted that he hadn’t called him.

“_ Aw~ that’s so sweet. But it’s fine, I’m a little sore but I’ll need your help on Monday anyway.” _ Wrench chuckled, he could have used the help today, but there was no point in both of them being sore. _ “Trust me, we’ll have our work cut out for us.” _

He heard Marcus hum a little on the other side. “So you got jobs for everyone already worked out?”

_ “Yep, you and me are working hardware, Josh will be working on a control program, Mickey Mouse is in charge of getting some kind of computer system in the thing, and Sitara is on visual. _ ” he explained, pausing long enough to pull his mask off a bit so he could pop on of his pizza bits in his mouth. If this kept up they would go cold. _ “So you said you wanted to ask me something. was that what you wanted to ask me?” _

“Ah, no..” He could hear the nervousness in the other teen’s voice.

“_ Oh so your just chatting me up before you ask me out?” _ he tossed in a little humor to try and ease Marcus’s nerves. _ “Well don’t worry baby, I’m easy, just don’t tell nobody.” _ what could he say he liked to Bromance Marcus just a little bit.

This seemed to get a laugh out of Marcus, or at least almost cause the poor guy to choke on his drink. “D-dude, Common now.” the other took a few moments to calm himself down, or clean up whatever mess he had made with his drink. “Nah man, My Mom wanted me to invite you to Dinner sometime.”

Now it was Wrench’s turn to hack and cough as pizza stuffing tried to find its way into his lungs. _ “What?” _

“My Mom wants to Meet you.” Marcus explained in a short answer. “Common man, it's just gonna be Pizza, and she said she’d be cool with your mask. You can even sleep over if your parents don’t mind.”

If his parents didn’t mine? They really didn’t get a say in his life anymore. Wait, what if they asked him about his parents? How the hell would he answer that one?

“You can say no if you don’t want to come. But she wants to meet my best friend at some point.”

Damn it! How could someone like Marcus be so damn thoughtful and nice, and yet pull of an anime betrayal like that. Playing the Best friend card like that. They had only known each other for a week and damn it they were best friends already. Fuck.

_ “So when's this happening?” _Wrench finally spoke.

“Whatever day your good with I guess.” The other teen sounded relieved by this.

_ “How about the first Saturday of October?” _he suggested, it seemed far enough away that they would at least have some work done on the car by then. 

“Yeah, sounds good. I’ll run it by her.” Marcus sounded just a bit more excited. “It’ll be fun man. I promise.”

“Marcus, Dinner!”

He could just hear the other teen’s other calling him.

“Coming Mom!” Marcus yelled before addressing Wrench again. “Sorry man. Dinner calls.”

_ “Yeah, no problem. I’m gonna grab something myself.” _ really he already had something but he didn’t want to tell his friend that he’d been keeping him from eating it.

Once Marcus left the voice chat, Wrench left it as well. Double checking just to make sure. 

With a sigh he leaned back on his bed for a moment as he took the lower part of the soon-to-be New Mask off and then popped another Pizza Bit into his mouth. A thousand thoughts were swarming through his head, from the idea of dinner with his friend’s parents to the deadline for the car to the up coming dinner with Marcus's family to the fact that his face was completely exposed right now.

He needed something to distract himself.

Sitting up once more, he took his bowl and walked over to his desk to continue to work on his new mask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is another short one. I think I'll try to do a short one in between every long one. so next one will be a lot longer. this just kind of gives me a chance to write little interacts between Wrench and Marcus.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus gets a little help with his math homework, and the robotics club starts work on the car.

**Monday, Sept 9th**

Math was hardly anyone's favorite subject, and even if it was somehow someone's favorite subject Marcus highly doubted they would enjoy coming to the classes. The Math wing as the staff called it, or the dungeon as Wrench loved to call it, was poorly lit with dull flickering lights and had a faint smell of mildew that seemed to linger throughout the hall. Even the classrooms seemed to have poor lighting, they even had bars on the windows.

The smell was the first thing that hit Marcus as he entered the hall as he headed towards his math class. 

Why hadn’t they cleaned up this hallway yet?

It made him quicken his pace towards his classroom only to find it wasn’t much better. But at least inside he spotted a familiar face sitting near the back.

“Whoa, man. Now I know why Wrench calls this the place the dungeon.” He spoke up as he neared Reg, watching as the blonde nearly jumped out of his own skin upon hearing his voice. “Sorry Dude, didn’t mean to spook you.” It had become a habit at this point that he would sit next to the boy every time they shared a class together. The guy had been nice to him after all, that was the only reason or so Marcus told himself.

Reg shook a little as he looked up at him, looking more tired than Marcus had seen him before. “I-I’m fine.” the blonde spoke up looking away from him again. “A-and you get use to the smell...eventually.” 

“Not sure I want to get use to it.” Marcus muttered as took his seat and sat his binder and textbook down on the desk. as he waited for class to start he looked back over at Reg and looked him up and down, the other boy starting to fidget under his gaze. He looked paler than normal which was saying something and looked like he was in slight pain. How someone could look so anxious, tired and somehow still be freaking cute was beyond him. “Hey, are you okay?” he asked.

Reg just rested his head against his desk and sighed. “I’m, I’m fine. Just tired...didn’t sleep well is all.”

“You sure?” he asked once more and got a slow nod in reply. “Alright, but just let me know if you change your mind.” he turned away from the other as the teacher finally closed the door to the classroom. 

After a quick roll call, the teacher set the class on quick assignment that was in their textbooks and assigned a due date for the next class; before heading to his desk and putting his feet up. Cracking open his text book to the correct page Marcus got a fresh sheet of paper from his binder and started to read over the directions to the assignment. The assignment was easy enough though Marcus had a feeling he would be finishing this one at home. It was one of those Math problems that required you to solve 15 different equations just to find the solution to the main question, and of course they wanted you to show your work so you couldn’t just wipe out your phone and do it all quickly. To him it felt like a very round about way to find an answer to anything.

“Yo, Reg. I got 39 for the third equation. What’d you get?” the answer didn’t really feel right to him but he didn’t really have a calculator to double check, and he’d figured he’d see what the blonde got before he pulled out his phone. If two people got the same answer then it was probably right. Yet the other boy didn’t give any kind of reply, not even his normal quiet grunts. “Reg?” Marcus looked over to the other teen to find out why the other wasn’t answering him.

For a moment he worried the blonde had in fact passed out at his desk as he feared, but upon closer inspection he could see the other’s arms folded on top of his desk and his head resting on top of them. Clearly the other had purposely fallen asleep at their desk, or at least made himself comfortable enough before submitting to it.

“You have got to start getting some more sleep at night.” Marcus just muttered to sleeping teen and choose to just push through with the equations on his own, he’d go through them tonight and make sure they were correct once he was home. 

Reg seemed to sleep through the whole class because when the bell rang once more, Marcus looked over to see the blonde still sleeping on his desk. Nothing really amazing happened through class aside from the teacher writing down a hint to help students figure out the assignment easier, so he didn’t really miss much. While he didn’t want to wake him, as he clearly needed the sleep he wasn’t about to leave the other there. “Hey, Reg.” he said gently as he touched the other boy’s shoulder and gave it a shake. “Hey, man. You gotta wake up. It’s time for lunch.”

The blonde groaned a bit and pulled away from his touch as he stirred. “Ow.” he thought he heard the other say. “W-wha?” the other looked around the room quickly.

“Hey man. Class is over. Time for lunch.” Marcus repeated himself quietly so not to freak the other out.

“Class is...over?” Reg echoed the words as his mind started to slowly work, then it seemed to fully sink in and a look of horror took over his face. “I slept through the whole class?” it was probably the loudest Marcus had ever heard the other speak. Insistently the other seemed to be panicking over this, his shoulders shaking as he drug his nails into the back of his skull as his breathing started to become quick and shallow.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Marcus quickly walked in front of the other boy, making eye contact with the other teen. while he himself was never prone to anxiety attacks he had friends back in Oakland who had them and he had learned when to spot them. He put his hands on both of the blonde’s shoulders as he tried to steady him. “It’s okay man. Just look at me.” he waited until the pair of icy blue eyes were finally looking at him and not in his direction, he made a mental note that the red spot on Reg’s face made his left eye look bluer than the other. “I know where your mind’s going right now, but You didn’t miss anything, I promise. No one but me noticed it and you can copy my notes if you want. Just breath.”

Slowly Reg seemed to calm down as his breathing became steadier and he slowly lowered his arms back down to his sides. “All-alright.” the teens voice was quiet once again and Marcus carefully took his hands off the other’s shoulders.

“Common, we can walk to the cafeteria together and you can copy my notes.” Marcus stood up straight and got his stuff from his desk then reached down to pick up Reg’s bag so he could hand it to the blonde. “Oof” it caught him off guard with how heavy it was. He heaved it off the ground once more as the blonde stood up. “Why’s your bag so heavy? And how has it not snapped you in half?”

Carefully and with shaky hands Reg reached out and took hold of his own backpack from Marcus, and slung it over his back. “I-I don’t really have a locker, I prefer to carry my stuff with me anyway.” came the quiet reply as he turned and got his things from his desk. “I-I’ll meet you in the hall in a second..I just need to hand in my assignment.” he spoke as he waited away from Marcus and towards the teacher sitting at his desk, waiting for the last two students to leave his classroom.

“Wait, you finished it?” Marcus was floored at this, he was pretty sure the blonde had only been awake for the first few minutes of the class before he conked out. When did Reg have time to complete the assignment? He was pretty sure no one else had. 

As Reg handed the piece of paper over to the teacher as Marcus made his way to the door and waited for the blonde to catch up. 

“A-alright I’m ready when you are.” Reg gave a very slight smile towards him but he pulled back quickly as his eyes darted around the hallway worriedly. “Did-did I do something wrong?”

Marcus just stared at the other teen with a bit of mocked annoyance and maybe just a tad bit of real annoyance too. The guy had slept through class and then panicked about it despite the fact he had pretty much finished the only thing that needed doing. But who was he to argue with anxiety? He let out a sigh and rubbed at the back of his head. “No you didn’t. But-” he wondered if he should bother the other with this, the guy seemed stressed enough. “I was wondering if you would mind looking over my assignment...I may have gotten a little stumped on a few of those equations.” he gave a little nervous laugh as he glanced away from the blonde’s face. “I mean you don’t have to, I could probably get someone in the Robotics club to help me with it. Like Sitara or Josh or even Wrench.” he was pretty sure Wrench had mentioned he was good at math. The guy did hold the title of Chief Engineer so he had to be at least somewhat good at it, right?

When he finally looked back, Marcus saw that Reg’s face held an expression that was a combination between amusement, confusion and nervousness all mixed into one. It was probably the most emotion he had seen the guy display that wasn’t panicked or tired. Reg honestly looked like he wanted to say something but was holding it in. Finally the blonde just smiled. “Sure, I can look over it for you.” he said without a stutter in his words.

“Cool.” all the nervousness left Marcus’s body at the blonde’s words and he felt himself relax. “Now let's get something to eat, then you can show me what the heck I’m doing wrong.” with that the two headed to the cafeteria.

\--------

**After classes**

Marcus walked into the club-room and saw that Wrench had been the first one in the classroom with himself in second place. The club leader stood at the table that was pushed to the front, that everyone had named ‘the Wrench Bench’, working on a small circuit board, looking up when Marcus walked in.

_ “Hey M. See you're here early. _” Wrench stopped what he was doing and placed down his tools.

“Yeah, last class was pretty much down the hall.” Marcus answered as he walked over to the bench. “Almost thought I’d beat you here.” he looked down at the circuit board that was lying on the bench’s surface. “Whatcha working on?” the shape of it looked like it would belong to some kind of VR headset.

_ “Glad you asked.” _ The masked teen picked up the board and turned it over to show thousand tiny light bulbs. _ “Your looking at the very beginnings of the eye-piece to my mask.” _ Wrench stretched his arms over his head and Marcus heard a bit of static coming from the welding mask, he was guessing that was a yawn. “ _ I probably spent most of last night working on this just to get it this far. Check it out.” _he flipped a switch on the side of the circuit board and some of the lights lip up forming two Xs on either side of the circuit board.

“Looks pretty cool.” Marcus commented as he looked it over, see the tiny lights but there was one thing he had to ask. “But if this is the eye-piece how are you going to see out of it?”

“_ That, My dear Marcus, is where this! Comes in. _ ” Wrench reached over and pulled out a frame that looked like it belonged to a pair of goggles, that had wires running through it. “ _ See here...” _ he pointed to the top of the framework where a tiny device was planted. “ _ It’s a tiny camera, once I get the thing set up it’ll display everything the camera sees on a screen on the inside of the masks.” _

Marcus smiled as he looked over two pieces he was seeing. “Damn man, that’s awesome.” he looked from the devices back to the masked Teen. “Looks like you're almost done. You just need to put it together.”

_ “Not quite.” _ Wrench’s shoulders dropped a bit at this. _ “I still need to get some kind of facial tracking program so that way the outside can reflect emotions, cause I know this…” _ he knocked twice on the welding mask. “ _ Can be a little hard to read.” _

“Damn you going for some Sci-Fi shit, huh?” He looked over at Wrench with a raised brow. “So how’s that coming?” He was hoping the other wasn’t tiring himself out by taking on so many tasks.

_ “Well, I’m trying to figure that out.” _ Wrench sighed, bowing his hooded head. _ “I managed to get the eyes to change with an app on my phone. But I need it to be hands free.” _ Marcus heard another yawn. _ “And I really haven’t had much time to work on it.” _

“Well, maybe all you need is some rest.” Marcus patted him on his shoulder. “Maybe getting away from it will help you come up with the answer.” he smiled at the other. “Your pretty smart, you’ll figure it out” he looked the other teen up and down, recalling another who looked almost just as tried today. “ but try to get some rest. You sound about as tired as Reg looked in math class today.”

Wrench seemed slightly taken aback by that last part, yet with his current mask on he couldn’t tell what the other’s expression was until he let out a quiet chuckle. _ “Your pretty smart, for someone who needed help with his math homework.” _

Now it was Marcus’s turn to be surprised, he didn’t even notice the others were starting to come in. “How’d you know about that?” Reg really didn’t seem like the kind of person to spread rumors.

_ “Little birdy told me~” _Rather than elaborate on that kind of answer Wrench just turned towards the others with a laugh, clearly something was funny here and Marcus was hoping it wasn’t his skills in math. But he chose to let it go, after all it wasn’t that big of a deal and Wrench would probably let it be if he did first.

_ “Great! You're all here.” _ Wrench spoke as he turned towards the others who had all gathered around the middle table. _ “Now I’ve sent you all your assignments through discord, But just to go over them here. Marcus and I are going to be working on the body, you’ll all see why when we get out there. JB, I want you to work on a computer system for the car, I want you working close with Josh on this one cause he’s working on a program to control the thing from an app... _”

** _“I won’t need help.”_ ** JB cut the other masked teen off. ** _“I could do this in my sleep. Have a little faith Wretch.”_ **

Josh just looked between the two, clenching and unclenching his fists a few times before he spoke. “I’m going to need the specs for the computer to make the program other than that I should be fine.”

Marcus just heard Wrench sigh from under his mask, too tired to argue with either of them. He was pretty sure Josh wasn’t trying to be difficult, it was harder to tell with JB though. 

_ “Whatever you say Mickey Mouse. Anyway, Sitara your on design. I don’t think I have to explain any of that to you, right?” _ Wrench just continued not even glancing at JB but looking towards Sitara.

“I think I can handle that.” She smiled as she leaned against the table. “I’ll also help out these two when I can.”

_ “Awesome.” Wrench gave her a thumbs up, seems like he could always count on Sitara. “As for Horatio” _ Horatio wasn’t here at the time, probably at a student council meeting once again. _ “he’ll be helping out whatever group needs help whenever he comes in. He’ll also be working on a security program. We don’t want to risk this thing getting hacked.” _ the room seemed to go silent no doubt thinking back to last year. _ “Now that that's out of the way, You all should see the ‘Car’ we’ll be working on.” _

“** _Finally.”_ ** Marcus heard JB spit as they started to follow the Chief Engineer out of the school and into the parking lot.

\-----

Aside from a bit of complaining about how the car looked, which was less than he had expected really. The Car was in pretty bad shape, it was covered in a thin layer of dust and rust clung to almost every part of the car. Chip paint and Dents all over, this beast had seen far better days. Really he would be surprised if the thing would turn on if he had the key for it. But all in all the group took it about as well as he expected.

Though he did wish they had stayed and helped Marcus and him with some of the body work instead of heading back inside. He just hoped they were writing down what they needed and maybe even getting started on their jobs. Last thing he wanted was to be the GSD police again.

“So, What do we do First?” Marcus broke his train of thought as he looked back at him. At least he ready to go.

_ “I need you too…” _ Wrench walked quickly over to trunk and popped it open, pulling out a large duffel bag he had packed full of the stuff they would need to De-rust this hunk of junk; he had stored it in there yesterday. He unzipped the bag and handed Marcus a roll of painters tape. _ “Mark all of the areas with rust on it. Try and get a wide area.” _ He pulled out a battery powered Sand Grinder. _ “I’m going to make a pass on them and try to get rid of the rust and get it back to bare metal. It’s going to be like trying to grind the sin off of Cersei Lannister but like Margaery Tyrell we gotta at least try.” _

“Dude, Spoilers.” Marcus hissed as he set to work, taping off the areas. 

_ “If you don’t know she’s a dirty bitch, then your not even pass episode one,” _ Wrench countered with a chuckle, waiting a few moments before following behind Marcus. “ _ You can start applying grease remover or mixing filler once your done.” _ he smirked underneath his mask. _ “Just make sure your Math is correct on it, mix needs to be just right.” _ he started to grind away the rust from the first spot Marcus marked off. He could feel Marcus glaring at him from the other side of the car.

“Did Reg tell you about the Math thing?” Marcus demanded, clearly he was annoyed that this was being brought up again.

“_ Uh… _ ” he paused in his grinding. How was he going to answer this one? _ “Yeah you could say that.” _

“Right, dude barely talks to me unless I prompt him to; and your saying he just talks to you? I would have thought someone like you would scare the crap out of a guy like him.” the other teen was giving him a look of disbelief. “How do you two know each other?”

Wrench wasn’t sure if this conversation was funny or kind of sad, maybe it was a twisted form of both. _ “You-you could say the two of us go way back.” _ it wasn’t a lie, he had known Reg for a really long time. _"In fact it's be weird if we didn't know each other."_

“Really?” the look of disbelief faded into a slight shrug as Marcus seemed to accept his answer. “Alright, he say anything else about me?” now he held a bit of a coy smile as he looked over at the other.

_ “Just that the Hipster that he shared a few classes with let him sleep through math class and saved him from an anxiety attack.” _Wrench answered trying to focus on getting rid of the rust rather than the awkwardness of this conversation. If he had known that the Math thing would have led to this than he would have left it alone from the start. But it was so much fun to tease Marcus it was just so hard to resist.

“I’m not a Hipster.” Marcus stated dully, as if someone had thrown some lame insult at him.

_ “Keep telling yourself that.” _ Wrench chuckled as he moved on to the next spot. _ “Maybe one day it might be true.” _

For the moment silence took over them for a moment, and as Wrench continued to grind away the rust he wondered if he should just come out and tell Marcus the truth, but he wasn’t sure how the dude would take it.

“So Wrench…” Marcus broke the silence, making him pause once more. “Important question time... Aliens vs Predator?”

It almost caught him off guard as he hadn’t expected it at first, but Wrench quickly recovered. _ “The Question doesn’t make any sense.” _ he stated at the sheer craziness of Marcus’s question. _ “I mean, Aliens basically use Predator’s as an external womb to perpetuate their species...and the Predators” _ he paused just long enough to collect his thoughts on this. _ “...well they come from a world where basically you hunt or you die, they need the Xenomorphs to hone them into elite warriors.” _ he shrugged as he ended his explanation. _ “It’s a fucked up ecosystem man, so they don’t really have any winners.” _

But he could just tell by the look on Marcus’s face that he wasn’t going to give up on this. “But I mean purely Hypothetical in a one on one battle, who would win?” Marcus asked “Just ignore the science behind it for now.”

_ “Are we talking Ridley Scott or Cameron?” _ he needed the clarification, there was a big difference and if he was going to give an answer he wanted to make sure he knew what he was talking about.

“Um…” it was at this point the hipster paused as thought this over. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen either movie. You know what, let's put this on pause. I’ll watch em both tonight and get back to you.”

_ “Alright. Just DM me with answer and I’ll break it down for you.” _

His arms were starting to become numb as he worked on the last spot, and he could smell the grease remover Marcus was applying behind him, burning the inside of his nose. Worse, because he was bent over for so long his Mask was starting to pull away from his face. Turning the Grinder off Wrench set it down and shook his arms trying to get feeling back into them again. “Freakin arms fell asleep.” it was only at hearing the sound of his own voice that he realized just how far the modified welding mask had pulled away.

“What?” of course having never heard his voice without the Modulator Marcus looked up and glanced around before look at him.

Luckily Wrench had been quick enough to slam his mask back down over the lower part of his face, at the cost of a slightly sore nose. _ “What?” _ he echoed Marcus’s question.

“Did you say something, man?” The hipster gave him a confused look. 

He wasn’t sure if he should lie or tell the truth. _ “Yeah, I said my arms are falling asleep.why?” _ he figured he might as well just tell the truth, he could always blame a modulator error. “ _ Think voice modulator screwed up, it does that from time to time.” _ he shrugged. “ _ Anyway we should finish up here.” _

Marcus nodded and glanced at the time that was on his phone. “Oh, fuck yeah. I should probably head home soon. I’ll help you pack up though.”

“Ah! Such a gentleman you are Marcus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like promised, this one is a bit longer then last one. I know I said I'd do a short one after every long one but the idea I have for the next one might lead it to being long. So I guess we'll see about that.  
Oh and don't worry, I'm not going to be going day by day on this. next one will be a bit further ahead.  
Also thanks again everyone for the Kudos and even for just checking out the story, it really means a lot. I know say that every time but it's true.  
also sorry for again for spelling and grammar errors.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the Robotics club has a very unexpected guest

**Sept 27th Friday afternoon**

“A pep rally? Really?” Marcus said as he walked with Reg up towards the back of the large auditorium. 

“T-they did the same thing last year.” the Blonde answered quietly taking a seat in the last row, noticeably closer to the door. While he was still overly quiet and still show clear signs of anxiety at pretty much all times; Reg had slowly opened up to Marcus, talking a bit more to him and him alone and even making eye contact with him. But when it came to other people besides Marcus, Reg always seemed ready to bolt. It was one of the reasons he didn’t try to introduce Reg to the members of the Robotics club. 

“Didn’t think School had much of a sports following.” Marcus took a seat down next to the other teen, allowing Reg to have the seat nearest the door.

“We-we don’t. We count it as a win when we’re mentioned as a honorable mention.” Reg replied as he leaned back into his seat and looking about as relaxed as Marcus had seen him in a good while. “It’s more of a moral thing. They get someone to come in to motivate us or whatever. Last year they brought in a comedian”

“Really?” Marcus looked over at the blonde with a raised eyebrow. When the only answer he got in return was a shrug he turned towards the rest of the auditorium, watching as the other students started to fill in through the doors. “Any clue who they got this year?” Marcus smiled and waved when he saw Sitara walk by, sitting not to far away from them.

The moment the girl glanced at them and waved back, Reg tried to sink completely into his seat and brought his hands up to cover his face as Josh and JB followed her. Looking just slightly horrified. “Fuck if I know.” he muttered from behind his hands. 

Marcus glanced back over to the blonde, giving the other an apologetic look. But before he could say anything the lights went down over the audience and the Stage lit up as the Vice Principal came out from behind the curtains. Leaning back into his chair and Marcus looked towards the stage.

“Welcome everyone to this year's Pep Rally!” The VP spoke into the mic with much more enthusiasm then the applause he got from the students. “Now we have a very special guest, and I’d like you all to gave a very warm welcome too…” the curtains opened up and the guest speaker stepped out. “The Chief Technology Officer at Blume! Dusan Nemec!”

Both Marcus and Reg pushed themselves forward in their seats, staring at the stage as a man with a full beard and a man-bun walked out onto the stage and accepted the mic from the VP. the round of applause he got from the students was far bigger than want the other man had gotten by far.

“The CTO of Blume?” Marcus heard Reg mutter in disbelief. “S-s-shouldn’t he be...I-I don’t know at a meeting or uh... jumping Scrooge Mcduck style into a pile of money?”

He might have laughed at that last one if he wasn’t still in shock from Dusan Nemec walking out on stage. Slowly he eased himself back into his seat, feeling a faint chill down his spine. Looking over at the other teen he noticed Reg was still sitting forward and was fidgeting his with hands nervously. Carefully Marcus laid a hand on his shoulder and eased the other back.

“Thank you!” The CTO waved to the crowd as he was given the stage, and slowly the applause started to slow. “Thank you all for such a warm welcome.” he seemed to smile at the crowd as he walked about the stage. “And thank you for inviting me to speak for this rally.”

“Don’t sound to thankful, does he.” Marcus whispered over to the Blonde next to him. There was just something in Nemec’s voice that didn’t sound sincere.

“About as thankful as an arrogant billionaire can be. Can’t wait to listen to this Jack-off for the rest of the school day” Reg replied in a biting tone that reminded him of Wrench just a bit. He has since learned that both Wrench and Reg had the same kind of sense of humor, though the latter barely showed it most of the time.

“Now as your Vice Principal said, I’m the Chief Technology Officer or CTO of the Blume Corporation, which as most of you may know is the world's foremost innovator of high tech, high-performance communications and security technology.” Nemec began his speech. “Blume specializes in everything from smartphone operating systems, Home computers, digital imaging processors, to linked-by-network security systems. And are Proud to have helped create a Market for these devices.”

Marcus glanced over at Reg to see the other was making a rather crud motion with his fist and couldn’t he help but quietly laugh. The darkness of the room must have been helping Reg’s anxiety. 

“And with the success of ctOS in Chicago we are more than happy to announce that very soon we will be installing ctOS 2.0 here in San Francisco.” Nemec swept his free arm out in a grand gesture. “And who knows, Maybe your school will be one of their first to have it installed.” 

Just the thought of the thing made Marcus gag just a little. He had heard about some of the problems ctOS had caused in Chicago, about how much information it really collected on people and how criminals were able to hack into the system with ease. Just the thought of a system like that here...he could only imagine the problems. And like he had told Wrench when he first met the guy, he wasn’t a fan of what Blume was doing.

“But I’m not here to talk about Blume.” Dusan slowly let his arm fall right to his side. “You see, not too long ago I was just like some of you.”

“Oh boy. Here comes his life story.” Reg whispered over, his voice laced with sarcasm. “You can tell because he’s starting off trying to sound humble.”

“I was born in Yugoslavia in 1990, but I moved to the states when I was a kid.” Dusan began, that same smile on his face. “Like you I grew up on using the internet, and I personally loved the experience. It shaped me into the man I am today.” he stopped and glanced around the room. “You see, unlike most kids, I wasn’t interested in sports or Athletes. Instead my focus was on programming and my heroes were the Programmers here in Silicon Valley.”

The man turned and picked up a bottle of water that was placed on a stool behind him. “After I found my center, I applied myself to learning on learning code; building better and better programs… and now look at me.”

A lot of the other students around them seemed to be clinging onto every word that was coming out of Nemec’s mouth, the guy had plenty of charm it seemed; but Marcus really wasn’t buying into it all to quickly.

It wasn’t long before Marcus had completely lost what the topic was, having zoned out pretty hard. When he finally started listening again Nemec was once again talking about this ctOS 2.0 and how it would change everything. Really everything he heard put him a bit on edge, predictive algorithms just made it sound like something that could get someone arrested for something they didn’t even do. He had heard of something similar that had been set up back in Oakland, Home Domain Center.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed as it was almost impossible to tell in this dark room. He glanced about the room to see if anyone else had zoned out like he had, and was surprised when he only noticed a few. How could anyone listen to someone talk for this long and not lose focus. 

“I thought this was a Prep Rally.” He groaned as he craned his neck back over the chair. “Isn’t he suppose to be trying to get everyone pumped, Tell us we can be as successful as him if we just focus on our studies or believe in ourselves or something.” 

“The one time I could truly get away with falling asleep and I’m not even the slightest bit tired.” he could heard Reg’s quiet voice mutter. “Why is he even here? This isn’t some big school, no one famous went to here, and we’re pretty low tech.” the blonde sat forward. “Why grace us with his presents?”

“Maybe he came to got his good deed for the day?” Marcus have a chuckle. “Maybe some planet is in Retro-grade or something so he’s gotta get that good Karma by talking to some garbage Underdog school. Or some other yoga find your center none-sense.” now he was having trouble keeping from laughing. 

\--------

“And this is the Robotics club.”

Everyone in the room suddenly stopped what they were doing and turned towards the door as it was pushed open. The Vice Principal had been the one to open the door letting in their guest to look about the room.

Upon seeing who it was everyone one went rigid save for Ray and Frewer who sprung to their feet in shock, Frewer being very quick to duck behind Ray to hide himself. 

Dusan looked about with an appeasing eye, looking over each member closely before his eyes fell over the two teachers in the room.The Vice Principal seemed to notice the lingering gaze the other was giving them and quickly moved to introduce them. “These are the two teachers that are in charge of helping and watching over the club, Mr Raymond Kenny and Mr Tob-”

“I know who they are.” Nemec interrupted him as he stepped forward. “Mr Kenny here use to be one of the top Software Engineers at Blume before he quit. Same with Frewer.” the man smiled as he walked forward to look Ray a bit more in the eyes. “I always wondered where you went when you left. Now I see.”

“Thought I’d come and get some young minds ready for what’s coming.” Ray hissed quietly, but it only caused Dusan to chuckle as he turned away from him.

“Well it looks like you have some of Blumes best looking out for you guys, but I didn’t ask to come here to check on your teachers.” Nemec was now looking at the students in the room. “Your VP informed me that your club has entered the Cyberdriver contest. I must say that it peaked my interest. So who’s the president behind this club?”

slowly the CTO looked around the room, looking at every members as he could tell who was who just by looking at them; his eyes fell on Marcus causing a shiver to go down his back. _ “That would be me.” _ But then Wrench got up and walked forward, this seemed to get a Dusan to raise a brow in minor surprise. “ _ And we prefer Chief Engineer, not President.” _

“Mr Williams what have I told you and Mr Markowicz about wearing Masks on school-” The Vice Principal started to scold the mask teen but was silenced instantly by their guest.

“It’s fine.” Dusan raised his hand silencing the older man like one would quiet a barking dog. “You're doing a lot of...work that requires eye-protection.” the man smiled down at the teen in front of him. “But I’m betting there's more to it than that, right? Hiding your face and your voice. Seems rather clunky compared to what your friend has over there.” 

_ “I make due.” _ was the only reply Wrench gave the man. His voice was surprisingly smooth as it came out of the modulator, and though his face was hidden Marcus could only imagine that his friend was glaring at the man from under the mask.

“Hm.” But Nemec didn’t seem to be bothered by any of this. “So Chief Engineer? I like it. Fitting for the leader of the Robotics club.” the man had a smug look on his face as if he had found something amusing. “Mind if I look around as you all work?”

For a long moment Wrench was silent, just staring down Nemec then glancing at the VP and then at everyone else. _ “Be my guest. _” Wrench moved away from the man going back to where he was sitting before, as Dusan started moving around the room.

The Blume CTO started pacing around the room, causing everyone in the room to try and watch the man out of the corner of their eyes. Ray stood at the front of the room by the Wrench Bench and watched the man carefully. Of course the first one he started with was Wrench and JB. 

** _“We’re working on board computer for the car._ ** ” JB spoke up without even needed to be prompted by the man. ** _“Well I’m working on building the computer, Wrench is just helping out because most of the body work can’t be complete until my work is done.”_ **

“Looks like your building it from the ground up.” Nemec commented looking over at the parts that were scattered across the table. “Seems like a lot of work.”

_ “The car we’re using was found in a junkyard. If it had an on-board computer before hand then its been stripped.” _ Wrench added, not even looking up from his work as he spoke.

** _“But if I build it from the ground up then I can make sure it has everything we need.” _ ** JB continued turning his work around to show the CTO. ** _“once I’m done this thing will have everything we need for this project.”_ **

“You sound rather confident.” Desan looked over what had already been built seeming mildly impressed with what he was seeing. “You know it’s going to work?”

** _“Of course I know it’s going to work, This isn’t the first time I’ve made something like this-” _ ** Jb ended up cutting himself off when he saw Wrench look up at him. _ **“Well maybe I haven’t something of this size before but it’s basically the same premises. A piece of cake for someone like me.”** _

“Well it looks like the right person was picked for the job on this one.” Dusan patted the rat-mask looking wearing boy on the shoulder. “Wish half of my engineers were as confident as you.” His words were kind and managed to make JB puff up with pride, but there was just something that didn’t sit right about it with Marcus. He then turned and paced over to bother someone else.

“So what is it your working on?” Marcus nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the man’s voice right behind him and Josh. the two quickly turned only to see that Nemec was indeed behind them, a calm smile on his face as he looked down at the two of them. He and Josh share a quick glance at each other before one of them spoke up.

“I’m helping Josh here, write the program we’re using to control the car from a tablet.” Marcus spoke first glancing from the screen to the CTO behind him.

“It’s based on functions used in most RC cars and drones use and the signal used by Xbox one controllers.” Josh added his input keeping his eyes solely on the screen in front of him as he continued to write the code. “It should give us basic controls once the main computer for the car is installed but with a bit more refining it should give us more complicated functions, like gas control and more complex steering controls.”

“What functions do you already have?” Nemec asked seeming only to be slightly curious. 

“Well the program is untested the features I have programmed into it are pretty basic. Just the ability to turn the car on and off and basic steering controls.” Josh answered looking over towards JB and Wrench at the middle table. “We won’t know how well it works until the cars on-board computer is installed.”

Dusan squatted a bit behind them, looking at the screen and reading over the code that Josh was typing out. After an uncomfortable minute of the man reading over their shoulders he finally stood up and paced towards Horatio to ask about what he was working on.

Even after the CTO had left the two didn’t breathe any easier as an uncomfortable air hung in the room.

After what felt like forever the man finally made his rounds and walked back towards the door. “Well it looks like you are all working hard. I see a lot of potential in what you're all working on and I look forward to seeing your final project.” Nemec clapped his hands together smiling at everyone in the room. “I know you’re up against a lot bigger schools and your clearly the underdogs here. But I want you all to know that I’m rooting for this school and all of you. Just focus hard, find your centers and win.” he gave them all a thumbs up and a smile before turning around leaving the classroom with the VP behind him looking like a dog that had just been given all the dog treats in the bag.

The moment the door shut everyone in the room let out a sigh of relief.

“He’s rooting for us? Seriously?” Sitara was the first one to break the silence looking around at the other members of the club.

“I highly doubt he is” Ray spoke up watching the door carefully. “Unless he thinks he can get something out of it.”

“Well he didn’t get a look of anything I put in.” Horatio stated getting up from his computer and looking over to Marcus. “I pulled up a different window and started typing nonsense into it the moment he started talking to you and Josh.”

Marcus gave a nod. “Yeah, Josh did same thing the moment the guy entered the room.” he looked back over to the teen in the green hoodie. “Good catch on that by the way.”

“Thanks.” Came Josh’s reply as he turned around in his chair so he could look at the others. “You really think he believes he can get something out of supporting us? I don’t see how.”

“Not sure what he thinks it is, Maybe just a PR stunt or something.” Ray turned away from the door looking back at that the students. 

_ “Well whatever it it” _ Wrench got up from where he was sitting and grabbed his bag from his bench. _ “I think I’m about ready to go home. Need to have shower and scrub down my mask to get that Blume sleaze off of it before it stains and leaves a smell behind.” _

“I think I’m feeling that as well.” Sitara stood up and started following Wrench to the door.

“Yeah I could go for a shower too.” Marcus couldn’t help but agree as got up as well. Josh and Horatio following him close behind.

** _“I think I’ll stay just a bit longer.”_ ** JB Spoke up, no moving from his seat at the table, causing everyone to look back at him. He’d been oddly quiet since Nemec left. ** _“I wanna put the finishing touches on this computer so we can install it next meeting.”_ ** he explained his reasoning. ** _“Besides the sooner I get this done and we test it the sooner I can start working on some sweet tracks for our test run.”_ **

Everyone's attention turned to Wrench who was, everyone assumed, just staring at JB before shrugging. _ “Yeah sure man, go for it. Just don’t over do it.” _ Wrench glanced over at Ray and the moment the older man gave a nod he turned back towards the door. _ “See ya, Monday JB.” _

** _“Yeah! See ya.”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Dusan Nemec has made it into the picture now, what's his plan? find out. I don't know, I was trying to write him as that guy who asks really nice to people but anyone observant enough can see that he's just an a-hole. I don't know.  
Also I realize I'm not being subtle with some things I tried and then realized I was being heavy handed with it so just threw subtle out the door. but if you guys don't know what I'm talking about...than don't worry about it, it's nothing.  
Anyway I just who you guys enjoyed this, took me longer than I wanted to take to write this.  
Sorry for any grammar or spelling errors.  
thanks for the Kudos and just checking out my fic guys as always it means a lot.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrench goes over to Marcus's house for dinner and a sleep over.

**Oct 5th, Saturday**

Wrench waited for Marcus outside of the garage...well, His Garage thought it was used mostly for club stuff really, an overnight bag in his hands packed with a few things.

It by far wasn’t really the safest area for someone his age, or any other age, to hang around as it was in a less than credible area with slew of druggies and homeless wandering about the streets. There was also the constant chance of getting caught in the crossfire during a fight between The Tezcas, The Auntie Shu Boys and the 580s that seemed to happen throughout the day. But at the same time all that stuff had made the garage dirt cheap and after he had fixed up the locks to require a signal from a trusted phone in order to open the door it wasn’t that bad.

It was far better than waiting for Marcus at his place, not that he didn’t want his friend to come over or know where he lived. he just didn’t want Marcus to become a target for the Bratva or the San Francisco Sector of The Clubs just because they were seen hanging out together up there. It was a pretty nice neighborhood to look at but just as dangerous as here. It was bad enough that even he tended to answer the door with a pistol within reach.

Wrench adjusted his welding mask a bit more when he started hearing shots being fired down the street, and people starting to run. Rarely would the fighting came up this far and they normally didn’t last long but he was ready to duck in-side if he needed to, still he opened his phone and sent a quick message to Marcus warning him about what was currently happening. 

A few minutes later and the shots stopped as the police got there and Marcus stepped off the bus, jogging over to him.

_ “Hey, your late. Marky Mark.” _He called out to the other as he walked towards him causing Marcus to take on a rather annoyed look.

“Okay, One. Don’t Ever call me that again.” Marcus glared at him making him laugh at bit.

_ “Okay, okay. Don’t get your designer briefs in a knot.” _He chuckled pulling the strap to his overnight back over his shoulder. 

“Well if I’m Marky Mark then from now on I’m calling you The Funky Bunch.” there was a slight smile on his friend’s face once again.

_ “Hey, whatever floats your boat, my dude.” _ Wrench just shrugged as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, like he was ever bothered with anything Marcus called him. _ “So what’s two?” _ At this Marcus just gave him a look. _ “You said ‘One, don't ever call me that’ implying that there’s a two. So what’s two?” _

“Oh. Well two was going to be ‘Are you okay?’ cause I got your message about the shooting.” Marcus explained as he looked at his phone, bringing the message up. “But clearly your fine.”

_ “Aw~ you were worried about me? That’s so sweet.” _ He cooed tilting his head slightly. _ “But like you said, I’m fine. This kind of thing happens at least once a day.” _ He made a grand motioned for them to head away from the Garage. “ _ Shall we?” _

“Of course.” Marcus quickly mirrored the gesture making it just as grand and the two started walking away from the garage. 

While Marcus had taken the bus there, they had both decided to walk down to Marcus’s house stopping along the way at a fast food joint where he Wrench had promised to buy them lunch. It wasn’t overly far from the garage, or at least according to Marcus, but it was far enough away that they didn’t hear the ruckus from the Street gangs all the time.

“So You remembered to pack everything, right?” Marcus asked as he looked at the bag the other was carrying. “Everything I said to bring. Change of clothes, toothbrush, Pjs, a pillow and blanket?”

_ “You need to search my bag?” _ Wrench rolled his eyes from underneath the mask nearly ready to toss Marcus his overnight bag, not that the other could see any of this; this was why he needed the new mask. The thing was fairly heavy though nowhere near as heavy as his school bag. _ “Yes I brought everything but the kitchen sink in here.” _

“Just checking, dude.” Marcus laughed as he continued walking. “Don’t want you to be unable to go to sleep cause you forgot your blanky.” 

Clearly the other was trying to tease him but this was Wrench he was talking too. how can you tease that which has no shame? _“Please Marcus! Clearly you haven’t seen some of the places I’ve fallen asleep.” _ like really he could sleep pretty much anywhere. _ “I’m like a cat on a pile of shoes, if I can lie on it I can sleep on it.” _

“Alright, alright.” the other laughed as he held his hands up in defeat. “And you remembered to give my address to your parents, right?” there was a long pause in which Wrench didn’t answer him, and Marcus stopped and turned. “You did tell your parents you were coming over right? Cause the last thing my parents need is your's freaking out cause they don’t know where you are.” 

Wrench was trying hard not to laugh as he tried to figure out what to say to all this. _ “Listen M. where my parents are currently, they have no real say in my life at the moment.” _ he hoped that would be enough to satisfy Marcus’s worries.

“So their on like what, Vacation or something?” Marcus seemed a little confused by this answer. “What if they come home early or call you and your not home?”

Yeah, his parents were getting home early from where they currently were. People don’t come back from where his Mother was and as for his Father...well if he ever came home early there was something supremely wrong with the justice system, well more than there already was. Besides his Father only got one phone call and he used it years ago. But how to explain this to Marcus without having to answer more questions?

_“Look, trust me when I say; there’s no way they can come home early.”_ Not without a jailbreak and the use of some seriously dark and often frowned upon arts. _“Just trust me on this, okay. Trust me, I’d get a call to my cell phone if there was even a chance they’d be coming home.” _two calls in fact, one from an Agent Morgan telling him to get out of the house and get somewhere safe, and the other from a kindly old gravekeeper to tell him the world was coming to an end.

“Alright man, I’ll take your word for it.”the other seemed rather skeptical but it seemed to be enough to get Marcus off the subject of his parents, and that was good enough for him; and the conversation had lasted long enough for them to get to the nearest Mcdonalds. “Common, I believe you said you were buying. So I hope you remembered to bring your wallet.” The other teen gave him a smirk. “Hope you got a big allowance cause I’m Hungry.”

_ “Oh I remember it.” _Wrench just shook his head as he walked through the doors, it was so tempting to just walk in buy a coffee and leave; but he was pretty hungry too so he’d have to do something else.

Marcus stood back away from the counter looking up at the menu above the counter with a hungry grin on his face. “Hm..I want a Big Mac, a double Quarter ponder with cheese and Bacon, a ten Piece, No a twenty Piece chicken Mcnugget, a large fry, a...Hey You getting all this?”

_ “Yep, I’m listening.” _ No, he wasn’t. Rather than continue to listen to Marcus trying to fuck with him Wrench had gone to the electronic Kiosk and was placing their order. As Marcus continued to listen off pretty much every item on the menu he had paid for and grabbed the receipt for the order and walked up to stand next to his friend. _ “So what are you going on about?” _

Upon hearing his voice Marcus turned towards him and spotted the receipt in his hand. “You got me something, right?” It was almost like he didn’t trust him.

_ “Wait? You wanted something? You should have said something.” _ the glare he got alone was enough to make him laugh. _ “Dude, chill. I got you a kid’s meal with apple slices and itty bitty bottle of milk. No toy though.” _ at this Marcus grabbed the receipt from his hand causing Wrench to laugh harder. _ “Common, M I’m just screwing with you. I figured we’d split a twenty piece.” _as if he’d be so cruel.

“We eating here?”

_ “Nah. figured we could take it to go.” _ He just shrugged. _ “Might as well put in some mileage as we eat. We can always stop somewhere if we need to.” _well that was one reason he didn’t want to hang around the joint, the other being that the staff in these places didn’t really seem to like the idea of someone wearing a mask just sitting around in their restaurant and would probably ask him to take it off sooner or later. He didn’t really want to cause a scene.

\-----

“So when you meet my Mom, try and make a good impression.” Marcus said looking over at his friend.

Once they had gotten their food, the two teens once again set out for Marcus’s house, which hadn’t been all that far really. So with the box of nuggets almost half gone when they arrived the two had decided to finish the meal sitting on his front step.

For what felt like the tenth time that day, Wrench was force to nearly choked back an only partly chewed piece of chicken so he could pull his face mask back into place so he could answer. _ “W-when have I not-not made a g-good impression?” _under his mask his eyes were watering as he coughed a bit, trying hard not to inhale anymore chicken bits. He was starting to wonder if Marcus was doing this on purpose.

“Well there was our first encounter.” Marcus sighed clearly recalling the ‘event’. “Wouldn’t really call it a good first impression.”

_ “Yet here I am. Best friend of Marcus Holloway.” _He smiled under his mask and spread his arms wide.

“Yeah. only cause I took the time to get to know you despite the fact you came off like a psycho.” Marcus just rolled his eyes at this yet there was still a smile playing on his lips. “I’m just saying, I would really like if my mom liked you.”

_ “Aw. so cute.” _ Wrench smiled as he reached over and grabbed another nugget and dipped it in some sweet and sour sauce, the oxymoron of sauces. _ “You make it sound like it’s going to be an interrogation, M.” _ he lifted his mask just enough so he could get the bit of chicken in mouth. This one wasn’t getting away.

“I don’t think it’ll be like that...but” the other teen paused looking a bit uneasy. “She has chased away a few of my old friends back when we were in Oakland. Never knew what it was about them she didn’t like. Maybe it was the way they acted, I don’t know.” he quickly looked back at Wrench. “Look just be nice, throw in a bit of charm, and try to lay off the swearing. I know it’s like your bread and butter but you don’t want to mess with Ms Holloway when it concerns her baby boy.”

Wrench didn’t know what it was that made him do it, if it was the ‘lay off the swearing’ or simply Marcus calling himself ‘Baby boy’ or maybe it was both of them to blame, but no matter what way you look at it one or both of them had been enough to made him laugh hard enough to drop the nugget. Worse yet, the motion his body had made as he let out the laugh had been enough to cause his mask to fall back over his face; catching the sauce covered chicken as it spread it’s sticky mess all over the inside of his mask and the sides of his face. _ “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Shit! God! It’s all sticky now! Fuck!” _he pulled his mask open enough for the cursed bit of food stuff to fall out onto the ground. 

Marcus on the other hand was in stitches as he watched his friend struggle to get a chicken nugget out of the welding mask. “Dude, why didn’t you just eat with your mask up the whole time?” he never asked questions about the mask, like why his friend never took it off but he never got why he was so keen on hiding his voice while he ate; he worried sometimes that his friend was going to choke because of it. “Here.” he stood and opened the door to his house for the teen. “Go wash up. Bathroom is just down the hall. First door on the right.” he instructed. “And take your shoes off.”

Wrench nodded his thanks as he stepped inside the house, pulling his beat up pair of converse off his feet. _ “Gotta clean this shit out before it starts screwing up the circuits.” _ he muttered as he walked past a small kitchen and living room before making his way down the hall. _ “First door to my right, first door to my-Ah!” _He found the door pretty easily and ducked inside, closing the door and turning on the light.

The moment the door clicked shut Wrench pulled his hood down and pulled off his welding mask. The last thing he wanted to do was use one of the Halloway’s face cloths to rid himself of the sticky mess so he did what he could with his wet fingers and some toilet paper. “This thing is going to fucking smell now.” he cringed, not looking forward to having this thing pressed to his face for the rest of the day...and all night; right this was sleeping over. Fuck. 

“At least it’s not sticky anymore.” he rubbed his thumb along the inside surface of his mask making sure he got it all. He was pretty sure nothing had gotten into the wires or the circuits. With a sigh he looked into the mirror in front of him, it was hard for his eyes not to be drawn to the big ass red spot on his face. right he should probably wash that face as well.

Setting aside his mask, Wrench filled the sink with warmer water then what he used for his mask; splashing some on his face feeling the water wash away some of the daily grime that seemed to always coat his skin. He shivered as his fingers moved over his birth-mark, feeling the bumpy and rough skin. 

He could hear Marcus talking to someone outside but he couldn’t really make out any words. 

Wrench opened his eyes as he reached for a bar of soap… but his heart nearly stopped when he heard the doorknob turned. He’d lived alone for so long he was used to not having to lock the bathroom behind him.

\------

“I just need to get my Contacts out.” His mother called out as she headed towards the bathroom, having just gotten home from work. 

“Kay Mom.” Marcus called back as he popped another nugget in his mouth, briefly wondering if Wrench was going to come out and finish the rest of his half, if not he’d be happy to finish it for him. Then it clicked. “Oh! Wait! Mom Wrench is in-” but it was too late as she had already entered. “Oops.” well he guess that was one way to meet someone. 

A few moments later and his mom came back out not looking to pleased. “You could have told me he was in there.” she scolded his son. “It was a good thing he was just washing up or else that could have been a bit more awkward than it needed to be.”

“Sorry Mom.” Marcus rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. That was one way to have a first impression. “Did it at least go well?”

His mother gave him a half glare as she took a seat next to him. “I walked in on the boy while he was in the bathroom, Marcus.” she rolled her eyes. “But if your asking my opinion. Well he seems nice. Little skittish and quiet but he seems like a sweet boy.” she smiled. “Not that someone walking in on you isn’t shocking, it was probably a good thing. He was about to use your old spice soap, Would have just irritated that birth-mark of his. So I lent him some of my stuff.”

“Wait…are we sure we’re talking about the same person?” Normally Marcus wouldn’t have interrupted his mother but the person she was describing didn’t really sound like the Wrench he knew. Wrench wasn’t really that skittish, and he really wasn’t all that quiet unless he was focused on something. It sounded a bit more like someone else he knew. And what was this about a birth-mark? “Wrench has a birth-mark? Where?”

“A Port-wine stain Birthmark, over his eye. Hard to miss, sweetie.” His mother explained. “It can be a sign of Sturge-Weber syndrome but it’s pretty rare. Might affect his eyesight later, hard to say. His eyelid does droop a little” she continued, it was sometimes easy to forget that his mother used to be a nurse before she had him. She looked back at him with a slight smirk. “I’m guessing you haven’t see him without that mask of his?”

At the mention of the kind of birth-mark it was Marcus had pulled out his phone and looked it up himself, recognizing the purplish red mark he saw in some of the photos. “The blonde with blue eyes?” he answered her question with a question of his own. 

“I don’t know.” His mother gave him a knowing smile as she stood up, rubbing his head as she headed inside. “Does he?”

As his mother went back inside Marcus let his head fall into his hands. “Little shit.” he laughed a bit as his mind finally connected a few dots as he realized he knew his best friend a bit better than he thought he had. “I’m eating the rest of your nuggets for this.”

\-----

The night had gone by pretty well, his Mom had ordered a pizza from some local joint and they had spent most of the night watching a marathon of Jimmy Siska movies. It had only been the three of them due to the fact that his father wasn’t home until very late.

But what felt like too soon his Mom flipped the movie off telling the two teens it was time to get ready for bed. 

As Marcus went to wash up and brush his teeth Wrench had gone to his room to get his sleeping area set up on the floor, and the moment he was done in the bathroom the two changed places.

Marcus sat on his bed as he waited for Wrench to walk back in, a pillow in hand. He looked over at where Wrench had set himself up on an air mattress his Mom had dug out, with a single pillow and a very light blanket he had brought from home.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t connected the dots before, heck the Vice Principal had straight up given it away when he called out Wrench’s last name that one time. He had had his suspicions since then but he never really bothered to think about it too hard. But now he was prepared to confront his friend about this. 

On Second thought...he put his pillow back where it belonged and quickly grabbed Wrench’s instead. This way the other couldn’t hold it hostage for what he was about to do.

He heard footsteps coming down the hall and knew the time was at hand. His aim needed to be true if this was to work.

The moment Wrench walked around the corner Marcus tossed the pillow at him. _ “Dude, I think you were worried about-Oof!” _he was hit hard in the face causing his head to be knocked back and the mask flipped upwards, the weight of the pillow knocking the mask completely off. “The fuck man?” There glaring back at him was Reg, blonde hair messier from having the mask ripped from his face.

It was like all the confidence the other had leaked out when the mask was removed, and Marcus felt a little bad for what he did. 

“When were you planning to tell me that Wrench and Reg were both you?” Marcus asked his voice a little less accusing then he originally planned. After all It wasn’t really Wrench’s fault he didn’t put two and two together. 

Wrench or Reg just sighed as he grabbed the pillow and his mask up off the ground and walked towards his bed. “If-If you haven’t noticed but the two of them might as well be t-two different people.” Marcus noticed the other’s stutter had returned and started to feel even worse. “Besides you n-never asked.” it was always hard to tell if Reg was angry, annoyed or just scared.

Marcus felt really bad now as he watched the other sit on the air mattress. “Sorry man. That was a little meaner than I meant it to be. Guess I was just embarrassed that I didn’t figure it out sooner.” he apologized, moving to sit on the air mattress with the blonde. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not in the least bit mad.”

“Truth be told I w-was kind of worrying about how you would react.” Wrench sighed leaning back just a bit. “Kind of glad it’s just out in the open now. Felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack every time you brought up Reg.” It seemed like he was finally starting to relax again, he looked over at Marcus. “But Did you have hit me in the face with my own Pillow?” 

Now that he was looking closely the bridge of Wrench’s nose was turning slightly red, the mask might have slammed into it from the force of the pillow. “My bad. But the other plan involved peeking under it while you slept. Figured it was better this way.”

Wrench just rolled his eyes. “Gee thanks.” he stared head. “First your mother then you, you Holloway’s are going to be the death of me.” the blonde muttered closing his eyes. 

“‘Me and Reg go way back’ yeah I’m sure you do.” Marcus muttered back, laughing at the comment the other had made when he first mentioned Reg to him. It was all so clear now. And to think he thought Reg had told Wrench about that one assignment, no wonder Reg always had this bemused/confused look when he mentioned Wrench. “Ass Hole.” he chuckled lightly as he playfully punched the other. 

“You act like I was being subtle about it.” Wrench finally chuckled, looking back at him.

“Well I see that now.” Marcus laughed harder. 

“You boys better not be fooling around in there.” they both stopped when they heard Ms Holloway called down the hall.

“Common, we should get to sleep.” Marcus whispered as he got up from the air mattress and moved back onto his bed. “Or she’ll be coming to check on us.”

“After, two anxiety inducing events courtesy of the Holloway family, I’m ready for bed.” Reg started to lie down. “Night M.”

“Night, Reginald.” Marcus grinned as he got in one more jab before he turned the lights off. But didn’t have time to defend against the pillow Wrench slammed down on his stomach in retaliation.

“Jackass.” he heard Reg’s quiet voice muttered as he lay back down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, Marcus finally knows that Wrench=Reg. I didn't really want it to be overly dramatic, just something a little fun. it wasn't something I wanted Marcus being clueless about the whole time.  
anyway, sorry again for any spelling or grammars errors. I try and get as many as I can.  
Thanks to everyone who checked out this fic it means a lot, and thank you for the Kudos/ bookmarks and the Comments as well; their big motivators, they really are. I'll do my best not to disappoint you guys :)  
I want to do my best not to make this your average cliche High school Au.  
to those who enjoy Persona crossover, that one is just on hold for now, just until I know where I want to take it. I kind of have this story on the forefront of my mind at the moment. so I will work on it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dark plots are a foot, and the Robotic's team finally get the on-board computer installed.

**Thursday Oct 17th**

The bar they had choose to meet in was sleazy at best, it definitely wasn’t what he would have picked; but if it got him what he wanted then he was willing to suffer just this little bit.

He wanted a few things, really.

It wasn’t long before he was joined by a rather large young woman with a faded haircut. She stared at him clearly waiting for him to start speaking.

“Miss Kastner.” He spoke trying sound as polite as he could. “Your probably wonder what this is all about.”

“You could say that.” She looked him up and down.

“Well I believe we can help each other out.” he picked up the suitcase he and set in on the bar counter. “You see, I need you to do something for me.”

She remained quiet waiting for him to continued explaining.

“You see, I have a deal with Galilei to stop a contest Hook motion studio has going on.” He explained looking down at the suitcase and drumming his fingers over it. “It’s for that new movie their working on with Jimmy Siska...have you heard of it?”

“Yeah, My shitty old school entered it.” She answered a slight look of disgust at the mere thought about it. “What of it? Why would a space company care about it? And why the CTO of Blume care anyway?”

“Interesting that you should ask.” he smiled as he ran a hand through his beard. “You see Hook motion studio was supposed to buy the car for that movie from Galilei, but they went with the contest instead to save money and earn publicity for their movie.” he paused to let the information sink in. “Galilei has asked me to try and put a stop to the contest, exchange they’ll help me with a project I’m working on.”

“So pay them off, Money bags.”

Dusan almost laughed, the school had been right about her attitude. “Yeah, their not going to go for that. To cancel the contest now could leave everyone involved with a rather bad taste in their mouth.” he opened the case just enough to pull a file out and close it again before the young woman could peer inside. “But if something were to happen at one of the schools, they would have to cancel the contest.”

He handed file to the woman. “Interesting that you should mention your old school.” 

She opened up the file and looked over the six pictures that were inside.

“I may have heard down the grapevine that you have a bit of a history with some of these individuals.” Dusan eyed her, closely watching her reaction the pictures. “I’ve also heard that you and your friends have a set of skills that could take care of this for me.”

“What’s in it for me?”

He’d been waiting and prepared for this, he pushed the suitcase towards her. “This should be more than enough to cover the cost to Stanford.”

Lenni popped open the suitcase and looked inside, her eyes lighting up at what she saw. “Yeah, this should cover it.” she closed the lid. “I can get this done for you, easy.”

“I need it done on December 12th.” he remembered Vice Principal telling him about the deadline he had given the team at the school, to see if they had the basics done by then. It was perfect.

“That soon?” she seemed a little surprised but shrugged it off. “I can see what I can do.”

“I can provide you with a weakness in their system you can use.” with any luck this would turn out better than he hoped it would.

\-----

_ “Almost got it.” _ Wrench’s auto-tuned voice strained as he connected the last of the wires, he was starting to wish he was just a little bit taller or that his arms were a bit longer. He felt like he was pretty much just lying over the engine. _ “There Ow-!” _his triumphant cry was cut shot as he banged the back of his head on the hood of the car. He rubbed the back of his head as looked back at his laptop, double checking everything then looked over at Sitara.

“Yeah, everything on our end is looking good.” She looked over the set up, not seeing anything out of place. “Everything looked like it’s hooked up right.” really, it was just guess work for them seeing as the closest they had gotten to seeing anything like this was Youtube. 

_ “We’ll know in a little bit.” _ Wrench reached over and pulled out a dirty rag from his bag, and started wiping his hands down. _ “How are you guys doing?” _

Marcus and JB sat in the driver and front passenger seats looking over the set up in front of them. The good News was that the whole thing fit, but the problem was they had no clue if it was all connected correctly. 

** _“Um…”_ ** JB scratched his head and lifted his mask, glancing back and forth from the dashboard computer he had made to the picture he had looked up on Nudle images. ** _“It looks right...I think.” _ **Even he wasn’t sure about this any more and glanced over Marcus for assurance. 

“Looks right to me, and it was working earlier when you hooked it up to that computer monitor to install Josh’s program.” Marcus was just as lost as the other was. “We’ll only know if turn it on.”

JB gave him one last look and nodded. ** _“Y-yeah! We’re good to go here.” _ **with a little effort the two started to fit the outside of the dashboard back on, and Wrench pulled the hood back down and pulled his Laptop away from it.

_ “Guess all we have left to do is to test it.” _ he took a few steps back away from the front of the car and everyone joined him. _ “You're up boy wonder.” _

Josh had been working on connecting the app to a spare tablet off to the side, knocking back a soda as he worked, but the moment Wrench called him over he was on his feet; edger to find out if his program would work. He held up the tablet up, facing it towards the car and turned the app on, once it was on he ordered it to switch the car on.

Everyone cheered as the engine purred to life in front of them, as all their work seemed to have paid off finally. 

And then their hearts all collectively sank as the car just stalled and the window wipers came on.

_ “Damn it.” _Wrench sighed pulling down his hood and running a hand through his hair.

“What do you think it is?” Sitara walked towards the car as Josh turned it off.

“It could be anything from the way the car is wired to the computer setup.” Josh stated as he stared at the car. This was enough to catch JB’s attention.

** _“Whoa, whoa! What about Your program? Huh? That could have caused it as well!” _ **The boy in the rat mask clearly taking offense to Josh’s diagnosis of the problem. 

“I never said it couldn’t be my program, but the most likely cause is conflicting-” Josh started to defend himself, his tone remaining as even as it always was, but he was cut off.

** _“Conflicting with the computer I made-”_ **

“Hey, hey, enough guys” Marcus and Wrench rushed forward and stepped between the two to break up the bickering before it could really get started. “Look it could have been anything and , and we still have lots of time to figure it out before the December deadline.” Marcus tried to calm the two down.

The moment the two geniuses were parted Wrench sighed and rubbed at his face under the mask. _ “Really we’re all taking shots in the dark here. I mean we’re looking at pictures from Nudle for Fuck’s sakes.” _he ran his fingers through his hair.

“It’s a shame we can’t see how one of these is even set up in the factory.” Sitara came forward laying a hand on the car’s hood.

“At Least then we’d know what problems.” Marcus had to agree with her, he had to wonder how many of the other teams were having this kind of problem; or had they simply just bought cars with this set up already installed.

“But to do that would require use to trespass on private property.” Josh added.

“Well, we’ll call that plan D.” Marcus joked as he clapped Josh on the shoulder, laughing a bit.

_ “Well the good thing is we got the onboard computer installed.” _ Wrench tried to be somewhat optimistic, though the thought of breaking and entering to quickly solve the problem did sound appealing. _ “Our goal now, will be to figure out what the fuck we did wrong.” _ He let out another sigh as he managed to steal a glance a JB. _ “But that can wait until tomorrow. Think we can call it a day.” _

The moment the others were gone Wrench pulled his welding mask off and groaned as he sat against the wall of the school building. “You ever feel like the answer is just looking you in the face?” he asked the only other person that was around as he closed his eyes.

“I feel that.” Marcus answered coming to sit next to the blonde. “Doesn’t help that we’re pretty much working blind.”

The blonde opened his eyes and looked over at the car, almost pleading with it with his eyes for the machine to tell him what was wrong. Maybe if he struck the thing with one of his sledgehammers he’d get some answers.

As if sensing what he was thinking, Marcus nudged him with his elbow. “Common, man. Your thinking to hard about this.” he smiled at him. “Try to get your mind off it.”

Reg flinched a bit at the nudge and turned his attention to his friend. “And think about what?”

“Well…” Marcus paused as he tried to think of something before snapping his fingers as he clearly recalled something. “What are you doing for Halloween?”

It caught Reg off his guard just a bit. “Horror games topped with horror movies at the Garage.” he answered putting as much enthusiasm into his as he could without his mask. “You want in?”

“Sure man. Sounds like fun.” Marcus grinned. “Now the important question. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

He almost felt his heart stop, he knew that tone of voice. “Probably order a pizza or something. It’ll still just be me at home.” he answered, it was always just him at home, but he had a feeling there was more to this. “Why?”

“Well cancel your Pizza, cause Mom wants you over for Thanksgiving.” Marcus smiled as he wrapped an arm around Wrench’s shoulders, noticing the look of horror that came over his face. “Chill, Wrench. It’s just going to be me, Mom and Dad there; we’re going to my grandmother’s the day before. We bring the leftovers home and do our own thing.” 

“I-I don’t know M.” his nervous stutter was starting to come back, he was tempted to pop his shield back on just resume being confident old Wrench. This was what he got for making sure he made a good impression.

“Common, don’t make me break out the Puppy eyes.” Marcus just stared him down his face contorting in a pathetically sad look and clung to him, it was enough to pull the heartstrings of anyone. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeease.”

“Alright, alright.” Wrench finally gave in, his face a little redder than normal. 

“Sweet.” Marcus smiled pulling away from him slightly. “I promise, I’ll be great-I mean, It'll be great. The sleepover went over great, didn’t it.”

"But you have to help me with something first."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one, with a hint to the main plot.  
thanks again for checking out this story and for the kudos and comments. the next on will be a little longer and I'll do my best not to disappoint.  
and sorry once for any spelling or Grammar errors.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the problem with the stalling engine has been solved but things don't go well when Wrench has to confront one of the club members about it. and JB gets an unexpected email.  
also some Marcus and Wrench fluff

**Oct 28 Monday**

Wrench sat with his back against the car holding the ice pack Ray had got him to his eye, the shield of his mask flipped up to keep the new dent it had in it from pressing on his face. That could have gone so much better than it had, but still...Who the fuck whips a wrench at someone like that?

“Hey.” he looked up at the sound of the voice cutting through the silence and spotted Marcus coming through the back door with a bottle in hand. Right, Ray had messaged the other boy from his phone before taking the spastic little gremlin away, to have a ‘talk’. “What happened out here?” Marcus asked handing him the bottle of clear liquid that Wrench secretly hoped was alcohol, but knew it wasn’t.

“I had a chat with rat boy.” he answered plainly as he put the ice pack down so he could open the bottle of probably water. “And he didn’t like what I had to say.”

Marcus walked over and knelt down in front of him, staring intently at the now sore birthmark that covered part of his face, it was probably looking a little more purple than red right now. A little too intently for his liking. “So he didn’t like what you had to say... so he hit you?”

Wrench took a gulp of water than lowered the face shield just enough for Marcus to see the added dent that had messed up the paint job. “He threw a wrench at The Wrench.” he raised it back up with a slight shrug. “Probably thought it was Poetic justice or irony or some bull shit.”

It took him a moment to recognize the look on the other’s face as anger. He’d never seen Marcus look this angry before that the emotion almost seemed foreign to him. “Son of a-”

“M, it’s fine.” he quickly reached out and grabbed a hold of Marcus’s shirt. “Ray’s got it handle, and I’m fine. Don’t go off the deep end, man. Not over this.” not that he was really one to talk as he often was known to smash things to pieces with a sledgehammer during one of his fits, but he didn’t want Marcus going there; not for him anyway. “It’s not worth it.”

“Wrench, he threw a tool at your head.” The other teen argued, almost seeming insulted that he didn’t think it was worth fighting about. 

“And Ray’s handling it, like I said.” Wrench pulled on the other’s shirt just enough to get the other to come and sit down with him. “Sides, I’ll get him back for it later.”

Finally Marcus seem to calm down and moved to sit next to him, and Wrench took the chance to rest his head on the hipster’s shoulder as Marcus started speaking again. “Your alright though, right?”

“Yeah, I mean my face hurts but I’m good.” he answered pulled the welding mask from his head. “Good News is that the dent can be hammered out, so no real damage done.”

Marcus was quiet for a few more seconds, taking the mask out of his hands to look it over for himself. “What were you and JB talking about anyway?” he asked softly turning the welding mask over in his hands.

Wrench sighed, in order for him to not sound like an ass he would have to at some context “Well before I even talked to rat boy, Josh found the problem to that stalling glitch we’ve been getting and messaged me about it.” he started to explain. “Turned out the problem was a mess of code JB had written into the computers core program.” a mess was a bit of an understatement if the screenshot Josh had sent him was anything to go by, a fitting title would be ‘a rat infested murder scene’ of Code, it didn't help that Jb had a bit of habit of adding little rat icons to the ends of his script. “basically it was causing conflicting commands, and just wasn’t talking to each other. Like trying to install a Mac only program on a Linux.” 

“That bad, huh?” Marcus commented looking down at him as he still had his face pressed to the hipster’s shoulder.

“I’ll send you the screenshots tonight.” The blonde added. “Just make sure you got a trash bin to throw up into.” he shivered recalling the mess he had seen in those pictures. he at least knew why JB did it, it was to deter hackers; no one in their right minds would try and fuck with that mess unless they thought they could get something out of it. But it caused problems with other programs. “So I either had to tell Josh to rewrite the app program, which would have taken far longer than what we have, or…”

“Or tell JB to clean up his mess like a disappointed parent tired of cleaning up after their son.” Marcus finished for him, though not the exact words he was going to use but it fit all the same.

“Pretty much.” Wrench nodded. “And he took it exactly as you’d expect rat boy to take it.”

“By throwing a Wrench at your head?”

“Hold on, I'm getting to that.” he shook his head trying to figure out the best way to explain this. “Basically, yeah I told him to clean up his mess. He threw a tantrum with the whole ‘why do I have to clean my mess, why couldn’t Josh just adjust his program...blah, blah, you can’t tell me what to do.’ BS, you know how he is sometimes.” He leaned a bit more onto Marcus then he meant to, but he was just so tired? Stressed out? It was one of the two. “So I...god it makes me sick just thinking about it… I told him I was the one who told him to build the computer in the first place so he could either fix it or I’ll go in and change it myself.”

“So you pulled the leader card.” He could pretty much heard the smile on the other teen’s face. “It’s not a bad thing, dude. My Mom’s always saying sometimes you have to take charge.”

“I just don’t like the idea of being a leader of anything. The whole authority thing kind of sits weird with me.” Wrench just sighed as he looked up at his friend, it wasn’t really what he signed up for when he wanted to start a Robotics club, he had just wanted to make cool robots and things. Why did their even need to be a leader anyway. “Anyway, Rat boy liked that even less and kind of shoved me so I shoved him back and Then he threw a wrench at my head.” 

“You know, I never really thought of you were an Anarchist, Wrench.” The hipster chuckled a bit putting an arm around his shoulders.

“Then you, my friend, haven’t been paying attention”

“So you put the group project ahead of JB’s pride?” Marcus ran a hand over the inside of his mask before handing it back to him. “Sounds like you were just doing the right thing. I mean it sucks that you had to pull a bit of authority on him, but think Spock says it best.” He raised his hand so both of them could see the typical Vulcan greeting from Star Trek. “The needs of the many”

“Outweigh the needs of the few.” Wrench returned the gesture, than just gave a shrug as he let his hand drop as he took his mask back, setting it aside. “Or the One. So yeah. That’s the whole story.” he finished as he wrapped an arm around the small of Marcus’s back; he was feeling a little touchy right now. “Now I have a headache, and elevated stress levels. At least the dent in the mask could be hammered out.” but the problem with doing that was that it would leave a weak spot in the metal, not that it mattered he was planning on switching masks soon anyway.

“Need me to kiss it better?~” He’d heard that tone in Marcus’s voice before, that teasingly flirty voice they both used when they were messing around; trying to make the other choke first. 

“Would you?” Wrench smiled as he looked up at the other teen only to see Marcus was looking at him. Maybe it was the eye contact that reminded him that he didn’t have his mask on this time and his own words caught him off guard. “S-sorry. F-forgot we try to go for underline s-sexual tension.” he quickly looked away as he wondered if he took it to far. “Y-you know what, an Advil would probably be better.”

He tried to sit back up quickly, but it seemed Marcus had other ideas. “It’s fine, man. You worry too much, sometimes, you know that?” other teen laughed as he held him tighter. “And I just might, if you didn’t smell like Motor oil all the time.” Marcus gave him a playful smile. “Try washing your sweater once in a while if you want a real piece of all this.”

Reg honestly wondered if Marcus could hear his heart pounding in his chest, it was almost deafening to him. “I-I’ll keep that in mind.” he smiled back trying to compose himself, but the moment the Hipster looked away he pulled part of his hoodie towards his nose. Shit, it did smell like motor oil. “Well, since we’re in a bit of a Bromanic position” he quickly let go of his sweater and reached into its pocket. “It got you something.”

Marcus looked back at him with a mildly surprised look. “You got me something?” clearly he wasn’t expecting anything like this. “You know my birthday isn't until the 11th of December, right?”

“Okay, well...I made it.” Wrench pulled the item out of his pocket and handed it to the hipster. It had taken him awhile to get it right, getting the wire through the charm and clasp was probably the second hardest part of making the thing other than trying to 3D print the charm itself. But all and all he was pretty sure the bracelet turned out okay. “I would have made on for everyone but...you and me are probably the only ones going to see the Cyberdriver movie.”

“Thanks man.” Marcus took in and turned the item over in his hands looking over it carefully, his eyes finally landing on the charm with the skull carved into the center and a word going around the outside. “Dedsec?”

“Um..yeah. I know the hacker group in the movie is Deathsec, but it was just a few to many letters, had to shorten it to something.” Wrench just shrugged, he’d broken about three of those charms before he finally gave up. “Thought Dedsec sounded cooler anyway.” he forced a bit of a smile trying hard not to lose his nerve. “If you don’t like it M, you can just tell me. I won’t be hurt or anything.” okay maybe just a little hurt, but wasn’t anything he couldn’t take.

Marcus shook his head and put the piece of jewelry on his wrist. “Naw man, I love it. And Dedsec is a better name.” he looked over at with blonde with a big grin on his face. “You got one too, right?” Wrench smiled and lifted his own arm up, the one he made of himself was not nearly as neat as the one he made for Marcus; just using a knot to tie the ends of the wire. “Nice.”

“You two getting all cozy?”

The two teens looked up to see Ray walking towards them, JB no longer with him. 

“How’d it go?” Wrench sat up, pulling away from Marcus despite not wanting too; but the ground was starting to get uncomfortable and the curves of the car was digging painfully into his back. “Did you get him to agree to change to code or did he throw something at your head too?”

“Well I managed to get to agree not to throw tools around. Not sure about the other thing.” The old man answered as he placed his hands on his hips. “Don’t think I helped much in convincing him of helping out...you know how he is.” 

That was the thing, Wrench did know JB and how he was; and it was hard to predict sometimes if the mousy boy would help or hinder them. “I’ll give him a few days, maybe it’ll blow over and he’ll do it.” Reg shrugged, feeling his headache starting to become worse as he stood up. “But he likes to win too, so with any luck that may drive him.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Marcus asked as he got up off the ground to stand next to the blonde.

“Fuck...I guess I go in and change the code.” He rubbed the back of his neck, he didn’t want to do that; it kind of went against his moral compass. Then again his Moral compass was a but if of a roulette wheel sometimes.

“Well I sent JB home for the day.” Ray just gave a shrug as he headed back into the school. “You two should probably head home too, Frewer and I have papers to grade and we can do that better without you brats around.”

With a roll of his eyes, Wrench gathered picked up his mask and gathered up his things; Marcus doing the same. He reached into his bag and pulled out the Proto-type mask he had been working on. He was not walking outside without something covering his face. After he got the pack on his back he started strapping his mask on. The screen to the mask flipped on displaying a pair of Xs, and on the screen inside lit up as well. Wrench ran his finger along the edge making sure it the leather fit alright over over his face. 

Just as he was about to leave he spotted the projectile that had been used against him. ** _“God damn it. He put a weak spot in my mask and broke one of my tools in one good swing.” _ ** he bent down once again and picked up the tool spotting the crack in the metal of the handle. The damage wasn’t too bad, it was near the back end of the wrench so it shouldn’t affect the working part; but the fracture would be hard to fix and it would have a chance to get worse if he held it too close to the back. **_ “Only I’m aloud to break my stuff.” _**Wrench muttered as he pocketed the tool than turned to look at Marcus. ** _“Wanna head to garage and do some gaming? Kind of want to take some aggression out on some NPCs.”_ **

The Hipster gave a nod and started to follow him. “Sounds good. Also you promised to help with my math homework.” Marcus gave his mask a look over. “New Mask is looking good.little plain in mouth piece.”

** _“Yeah, still not done yet.”_ ** He still needed to fix the emotion tracking program and he still wanted to add some spikes to the front. ** _“You coming or what?”_ **

\------

**Later that night**

He was still fuming when he got home.

Today had been going great until class ended and he went to the club room. Even then it had been pretty good until Wrench had called him outside to ‘talk’.

Reginald had no right to tell him to change his code to be more compatible with Josh’s program. You’d think after last year he would have put more thought into making the core programs more secure, even a little weakness could ruin the project.

Jay threw himself into his chair and started fiddling around with some different sounds he had been working on to try and calm himself down.

Okay maybe he shouldn’t have thrown a tool at the Tool's head, or shoved him. But he had just been so upset and than that Dinosaur tried to tell him he was wrong. 

The more he thought about it the more had found it hard to stay mad at Reg yet his mind refused to let him forgive the other completely. They had known each other for a long time, sure it was a bit of a stretch to call them friends anymore; but he didn’t want to hold the other with any ill will. At Least he hit his bad-side, not like that ugly ass spot could get any redder.

He continued to mix the different sounds, changing them until he found a nice harmony between them. 

He didn’t want to change what he had written, but he didn’t want Wrench to just go and do it. He also kind of wanted to win too, it would be nice to go visit his brother with a story of victory. He let out a sigh and let his head hit his desk, as he accepted defeat.

**Bing**

He looked back up at his screen to see that he had gotten an email alert. JB let out a sigh as sat back into his chair wondering what piece of junk mail had made it through into the important list. Opening his inbox he spotted the offending email and noticed it was from Blume. 

The fuck did Blume want from him? Maybe it was just an ad for that ctOS 2.0 or something like that. Bring his mouse over to it, he clicked on it. This should be good.

**To JB Markowicz**

**When we first met, I saw a lot of potential in your work; clearly the brains of your little group. and after a lot of thinking I think I’m ready to offer you a deal.**

**You see I have a few associates that would like to see an end to the Hook motion studios contest, the one your group is participating in. Should something happen to one of the cars during the contest then it would be cancelled. **

**If your willing to help I am can provide you with compensating you and the school with the money you Might have won from the contest.**

** I have also learned that your Brother is at Mt Hope mental health center. If you are willing to help me I could see to it that he is sent to a facility with more funding, better doctors and armed with my very own ctOS 2.0.**

**All you have to do send me the coding for the operating system that you made for the on-board computer.**

**In the end. The choice is yours**

**Dusan Nemec**

JB read over the email again and bit his lip. The fact that this email had come the same day Wrench he asked him to change his code was an amazing coincidence. 

He looked back at the email again, he knew he wanted to get back at Wrench for what he said but this seemed a little much. He didn’t care much about the movie but he wanted to win the contest and he couldn’t do that if it got cancelled.

Quickly he opened discord and quickly jumped into Wrench’s DM’s and opened a voice chat with him. “Dude, You better be there! I have something I need to tell you.” Boy, Wrench would have a field day with this. Dusan was trying to get the contest cancelled and wanted him to be a part of it.

** _“Yeah, dude what’s up?” _ ** Wrench’s voice came over channel, he must have been wearing the proto-type for his new mask. ** _“You know you cracked one of my wrenches with that BS you pulled.”_ **

Jay groaned slightly, he should have known that Wrench would bring that up.

His mind traveled back to the email and he found himself biting at his lip again, it had mentioned his brother. As much as he wanted to win and tell his brother about it, he wanted his brother to get the best treatment possible. 

** _“Defalt? You there dude?”_ **

“Yeah, I’m here.” He started speaking again realizing he had been quiet for a long time. 

** _“What did you want to tell me dude?”_ **

“Oh, I just wanted to say that tomorrow I’m going to change the coding.” He stated that forcing a smile that the other couldn’t see. “You were right. Man. Sorry for how I acted.” 

** _“Really?” _ ** Wrench seemed a little surprised, probably not expecting an apology. ** _“Geez, well thanks man. And I’m sorry for pushing you like that. I mean that.”_ **

“Needs of the many, right man.” he hoped his voice wasn’t betraying him. “Anyway that’s all I wanted to say. Night Reg.”

** _“Night Jay.”_ **

As he left the voice chat he sighed and leaned back, rubbing at his face. He wasn’t happy about what he was about to do. But he wanted his brother to have the best treatment possible and as long as no one got hurt then what was the harm?

He’ll make it up to Wrench sometime.

But family comes first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So did anyone see that episode of game of thrones where Ned Stark fines the Dire wold that was killed by the Stag? why am I bring this up? no reason.  
Anyway I think maybe one more chapter before I get into something big  
Anyway thanks for Kudos, comments and just reading this story in general. it means a lot to me, It really does.  
I'll try not to disappoint.  
anyway sorry for any spelling or grammar errors.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the day of the big deadline

**Dec 12**

If anyone member of the Robotics Club had been able to focus on anything during the day then it must have been a miracle. Wrench knew he hadn’t been able to, in fact he had spent nearly the whole of his History class in the nurse's office after a stress induced panic attack. He was just glad Marcus hadn’t been there to see it. Today just needed to end before he really made himself sick.

If today went as well as it had yesterday then all would be right with the world. Ray had promised to take them all out to celebrate their hard work and Marcus’s birthday. 

The blonde sighed as he splashed some water on his face, as he got ready to head to the parking lot. Marcus’s birthday… that was supposed to be yesterday. He had wanted to throw him a huge party, but he just ended up going over to his place and having cake and dinner there. At least he managed to give the Hipster his gift.

He took three shaky breaths and reached for his welding mask. “We got this.” he said quietly as he stood up a bit straighter. “We ran the tests yesterday and everything worked. So it should...No.” he pulled the mask over his face and then looked in the mirror. _ “It’s going to work.” _

He took another moment to just stare into the mirror as his hands stopped shaking. This was the last day for this mask, he was going to be changing over after this. Even if his new on wasn’t quite done.

_ “Okay.” _ he gave one last nod before pulling his hood up and heading out into the parking lot.

Everyone was out there, at least everyone that was in the club that is. Ray and Fewer were off to the side, clearly waiting for the principal and vice principal to come. Josh, JB and Horatio were probably going over their respective programs to make sure they didn’t conflict with each other, and Sitara and Marcus were standing by waiting for the others to be finished.

_ “How’s it looking?” _Wrench asked as he ran up to join Marcus and Sitara.

“So far, so good.” Sitara answered glancing in his direction before looking back at the car. “Seems like everything’s how we left it yesterday. But I got the boy’s going over everything with a fine tooth comb.”

“Last thing we need is something coming up while we’re showing this thing off.” Marcus added. “Josh added a kill switch yesterday just in case. Hopefully we won’t need it.”

_ “Good.” _ he let go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding, then looked over at Ray and Frewer. _ “Any news on when the big P and his VP are getting here?” _

Sitara shook her head at this. “Not yet. Apparently their waiting on their own special guest to come join them.”

_ “Special Guest? Who?” _The blonde was slightly confused by this. Who could possibly be interested in their project.

“Don’t know.” Marcus shrugged looking towards their computer programming teacher. “But Ray didn’t seem to happy about it.”

_ “Just what we fucking need.” _

“So what’s the plan exactly?” The hipster interjected, now looking at Wrench. “You do have a plan, right?”

_ “Yeah, I got a plan.” _ The blonde took a deep breath before continuing. _ “The Car just has to turn on and drive straight, right?” _ he looked over at the others and waited until they gave him a simple nod of understanding. _ “So the plan is: once Josh and them are done, we push the car out of it’s parking spot and guide it so that it’s facing head on. So we don’t have to worry about turning and all that Shit.” _ they gave him another nod. _ “I’ll stand a little bit out in the parking lot, explain what we’re doing, then when I get out of the way, Marcus just drives the car straight.” _

“Me?” Marcus seemed shocked by this. Oops! He had meant to tell him last night when he was sleeping over. “I thought it would have been you or Josh.”

“Nope.” Sitara cut in with a smile. “This was your idea Marcus, so you get to drive the car.”

_ “Just try to take it slow though.” _ Wrench gestured with his hands as if that would help. _ “Like, not a snail's pace, but like we don’t want this thing sailing off into the street and hurting someone.” _ he shrugged and let out a slight chuckle. _ “But if say, you fall into a Murderous Rage while driving it than try and Target the Principal and Vice Principal. We’ll have your back on that one.” _

“Right.” at least he was able to get a small smile out of Marcus. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“Wrench.” he quickly peered over the hipster’s shoulder at the sound of his own nickname being called just to see the other three jogging up to them.

_ “Any problems?” _he had to ask.

“Nope. everything is looking good.” Horatio added with a grin. “Think we’re good to go.”

Wrench felt like he could breathe a little easier now, and gave a nod. _ “Alright, let's move this thing into position.” _he quickly explained to the others how they were going to do this before they headed towards the car.

Moving the car was not hard despite all their grunting, not with five of them pushing the thing and Sitara guiding it with the use of the steering wheel. It was mostly just the turning that threw everyone off for a few seconds.

_ “Is it straight?” _He called over to the artist. If the wheels or even the car were aligned correctly then the thing would just drive into either the wall of the school or the fence that was the adjacent to the school that led to someone’s backyard.

“Hold on!” she crawled into the front seat and they all backed away from the front of the car. Sitara adjusted the steering wheel slightly and the tires moved under the car. “There! Now it is!” she confirmed as she got out and slammed the door shut.

_ “Okay, this is good.” _ Wrench clapped his hands together trying to focus as he stomach tired to tie itself in knots. _ “Anyone else feeling nauseous? Or is it just me.” _the other’s all looked so calm, he had to wonder if he was the only one feeling like this.

“Are you kidding, My stomach’s been doing flips all day.” Marcus was the first one to answer. “I just keep feeling like something bad is going to happen.”

“Same.” Sitara nodded. “Think I’ll be having a nice relaxing bath once this is all done.”

“I feel that. Student council has been harping on me about this for weeks now.” Horatio added, placing his hand on his chest. “But it’s going to be fine. We’re just psyching ourselves out.” 

JB looked like he was about to say something for a moment but seemed to change his mind as he twisted another knot into his Tee-shirt. If Wrench had to guess than this was hitting him just as hard as everyone else.

“It’s just Nerves.” Josh just stated before looking at something that was behind them. “Their here.”

Wrench turned around quickly to see Ray and Frewer talking to the Principal the Vice Principal with someone else standing with them, the other’s doing the same. Whatever conversation they were having ended fairly quickly as they were beckoned forward by the VP.

“Oh no.” Wrench heard Marcus mutter as they walked towards the group of adults, and it only took a few steps more before he saw what was going on.

_ “Are you fucking kidding me?” _ he tried to keep his voice as low as he could with the modifier in his mask. _ “The fuck is he doing here?” _

There standing next to the VP was none other than Dusan Nemec.

“Ah, Good! There you all are.” The Principal smiled as he turned to see the group of students walking their way, as if they had been the ones everyone was waiting on. “I hope you're all ready for the little show.” he paused just long enough for a reply that never came as everyone was staring at Nemec. “Oh yes. We have a special guest here today. As you all have noticed.”

At this Dusan stepped forward with that smug smile on his face, and hands behind his back. “Hello again.” he looked down at the group of teens in front of them. “I hope I’m not intruding, but ever since my first visit I was interested in seeing your progress.”

“Hear that, he came all this way just to check this out. What an honor?!” The Vice Principal jumped in excitedly startling almost everyone.

“Well…” The Principal clapped his hands together to try and pull everyone’s attention back to him. “Shall we get started it?”

The group just turned around and headed back towards the car trying to put some distance between them and the adults. The moment they made it back to their bags, Josh started digging out the tablet they had the program on. 

_ “Doesn’t Blume have like a… I don’t know, a Uniform or Dress Code?” _ Wrench glanced back at the group of adults. _ “Or are all of their Employees allowed to wear sweats?” _

“Tell me about it.” Horatio nodded crossing his arms, looking towards the adults as well. “I heard even Nudle had a stricter dress code.”

“Well I guess when your rich you can just dress like an asshole.” Marcus added as Josh handed him the tablet. 

Josh quickly made sure Marcus was up to speed on all the controls, and once he was done Wrench knew it was showtime. He looked over at the hipster and shot him a double finger gun. _ Ready to rock it?” _

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Marcus replied looking up from the tablet.

_ “Good. Let me just give you a good introduction and then you're set to drive.” _ he turned and started walking back towards the group of adults, but stopped and looked back at Marcus. _ “Also about that Murderous rage...aim for Dusan instead.” _he gave the hipster a thumbs up when he laughed before continuing forward. 

The moment he felt he was far enough away, he halted his step and took a deep breath, to try to slow his thundering heartbeat. He hated public speaking.

_ \--------- _

Marcus watched as Wrench walked forward before he started talking to the group of adults. Three of them standing together listening to the masked Teen as he spoke while Ray and Frewer standing off to the side, Frewer glancing nervously from Wrench to the car while Ray had his sights on Dusan. If looks could kill then the man with the Man-bun would have already been dead ten times over.

_ “This is our first real Public test of our school’s entry for the Cyberdriver contest.” _ Marcus could just hear Wrench starting to speak to the adults. _ “It’s nothing fancy, we’re just going to show you the basic movement function we have currently installed, which was way more work than what it sounds like.” _He could tell his friend was holding back a few choice curse words, if it wasn’t in his tone than it showed in his body language. 

A sudden sound coming from the the car nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he ripped his gaze away from Wrench to look at the now running car and then to the tablet in his hand.

“Did you do that Marcus?” Josh quickly turned to look at him, looking just as startled as he was; almost fearful too.

He looked over the app and saw the start button was near the edge of the screen where his thumb was. “Yeah...I think I might have hit it by mistake.” He gave Josh a calm smile though he wasn’t sure himself if it was true. “We might want to turn down the sensitivity just a bit on that button.”

Josh gave a slight nod and the two turned their attention back to Wrench.

Marcus sure didn’t envy his friend right now, there was no way he would be able to-

The Engine suddenly let out a Roar, as if someone was revving it up. In that instant Marcus pulled his fingers away from the screen so that he was just holding the tablet between his two palms, yet the engine continued to Roar. “That’s Not me.” he announced loudly.

“What?!” Josh’s head snapped towards him, the others quickly following suit; each one of them held a look of panic.

“That’s Not me! I’m not Doing this!” he repeated quickly handing the tablet to Josh only to have the Car suddenly speed away in the direction of…

“Wrench!” Marcus screamed out as loudly as he could, his voice going horse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was going to write like a thanksgiving chapter or even one for Marcus's birthday; but I just couldn't get anything written. So I ended up cutting to the chase and leaving a cliff hanger. sorry.  
I might do a fic with just stuff like that in it. just little fluff pieces that at mentioned but I don't end up writing in here.  
Anyway thanks again for checking out this story, to everyone that leaves Kudos and comments. Just everything. it all means a lot to me, even just the little things. and I'll do my best not to disappoint.  
and sorry for any spelling or Grammar errors, I try to catch what I can but I'm sure somethings slip through the cracks.
> 
> also this chapter was delayed a bit due to a storm that hit over the weekend that knocked out power long enough to screw everything in my fridge.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus goes to visit Wrench in the hospital

“L-look, I’m fine.” Reg hissed into the receiver as he leaned against the wall to get pressure off his leg. “I don’t know why they would even give you a-another phone call let alone a long distance one.” he rubbed at his forehead with the palm of his left hand as his right hand held the phone to his ear. He knew news travelled fast but he never would have thought it would be this fast or travel that far. 

It hadn’t even been a full day since the accident, at least not that he knew of but he couldn't be sure; those pain killers they gave him were pretty good. Yet somehow his father had heard about it and somehow got permission to connect him; all from a Federal Prison.

“It wasn’t a hit, dad. at least not in the sense you're making it out to be.” Reg tried to keep his voice as low as possible, as the last thing he wanted was strange looks from everyone else while talking to this man. “Pretty sure the other gangs have better things to do than try and kill the ugly kid that lives alone.” he let out a sigh as he listened to the man on the other end ramble on. He really didn’t want to hear any of this, let alone be talking to this guy. “Okay, Okay. I’ll...I’ll call Clara if I have any problems.” that seemed to be enough to get his father to finally finish up the call. “Yeah...bye Dad...love you too.”

He hung up the phone with a bit more force than needed and leaned fully against the wall, he would have let gravity take him down to the floor if he didn’t think he’d cause more pain to his leg and back. If there was one thing more painful than being hit by a car and more stressful than forced social interaction; it was talking to his father.

“Freakin behind bars several states away, in a fucking Federal Prison and he still finds a way to contact me.” he sighed heavily and rubbed at his face.

Of course he was lying to his father. He wasn’t fine at all, at best he was okay. His leg was in bad shape and his back had been messed up from the accident, added on top of that the bruises and Road burn covered his chest and arms. Fine he was not. Yet they were still planning on sending him home tomorrow. 

Pulling away from the wall he grabbed his crutches and started to limp away from the phone at the nurse’s station, and started to head back to his room. He was expecting a much more welcomed visitor soon.

“Wrench! Man, what are you doing up and about?” Marcus’s voice greeted him as he turned the corner that would take him to his room. The hipster was standing in the hall just outside of his room, but started walking toward him once he was spotted and opened his arms up. 

“Marcus. What are you doing here? Your early.” He called back and moved to accept the embrace, in fact he pretty much fell into it and it probably caused the hug to last a little longer than it needed to be. But Marcus gave really good hugs.

“Hey, man; How you doing in here?” Marcus asked softly, not breaking the contact. 

“Feeling like shit, M.” Wrench answered not willing to lie to Marcus like he did his father, his voice slightly muffled by the hipster’s shoulder. “Feels like I was hit by a car.” he tried to joke about the hold thing.

“Well your looking better than you were when I last saw you.” The hipster held him a little tighter at this. “I’m Sorry this all happened to you, Reg. Maybe if I had handed the thing to Josh at the first sign-”

Wrench slapped his friend hard on the back. “Don’t even start with that.” he groaned from both pain and hearing the other’s words. “Dude, this wasn’t you. So don’t even start.” he pulled away from the hug so he could look Marcus in the eyes. “Okay, M?”

Marcus nodded slowly and gave him a very slight smile. “Alright dude.”

“Good.” He turned towards his room and started limping towards the door to his hospital room. “Now common, lets go and sit on that thing they call a bed.”

Now that got a chuckle out of his friend as they both entered the room together. He wasn’t joking about the bed, the mattress on it was probably harder than the metal the frame was made out of.

“Oof, they make you sleep on this?” Marcus let out a grunt as he took a seat on the so-called bed. “Might as well sleep on the floor.”

“Floor might be a little softer.” Wrench placed his crutches aside and hauled himself onto the mattress. “You’d think with my back being messed up they’d at least give me something soft to lay on.” even the pillows were like rocks. 

“How long they keeping you here?” The hipster asked as he struggled to get comfortable. “If it’s another day you should ask for something softer. This can not be good for you back or any of your injuries.”

“Their releasing me back into the wild tomorrow. Thank fuck.” he pulled himself further onto the bed so he could bring his injured leg up onto the bed. “And they said they didn’t have anything softer. Probably keeping it for ICU patients and rich people.” he could understand intensive care needed it more. But then again the stuff seemed pretty cagey about expenses and the use of computers.. 

“Well at least your getting out of here tomorrow.” Marcus just shrugged giving him a slight smile. “So try not to start any revolts. Okay?”

“If I had my Mask, then I’d say no promises. But since I don’t. well..I don’t think I’ll be starting anything any time soon.” he laughed a bit but let it die off. “So what’s the damage?” he had to ask as it had been on the forefront of his mind since he woke up. “I’m guessing our club project is cancelled.”

“That’s not even the worst of it.” the smile on Marcus’s lips fell away as he spoke. “The Principal was pissed and is launching a full scale investigation into what happened, but not before disbanding the club and suspended us all until January. You included.” he could almost feel the anger coming off of Marcus as he spoke. “They won’t even let us look at the car to see what happened.”

“Fuck.” Reg cursed as he listened to the other rant. He couldn’t even think of something else to say. They were the victims and so they were being punished? At least that’s what it felt like. “So how’s your Mom taking it?” he had heard some parents were more inclined to punish their kids just for getting suspended regardless of the reason...His mom had been like that now that he recalled.

“She was pretty mad.” the hipster sighed but smiled at the same times. “Of course she was pretty mad with the principal seeing as she didn’t think we all deserved it.” he managed to chuckle. “Said she ‘would have understood if he was letting us go due to seeing something traumatic, but this was unexpected’.” 

“Well at least your Mom is on our side.” leave it to Ms Holloway to be one of the few adults able to see things for what they are.

“Yeah”

“So any good news?” he couldn’t help but laugh lightly at the whole ordeal. They had lost the whole project, been suspended, and he had been put in the hospital. The only way the news could have been worse would be if someone told him his dad escaped.

Marcus leaned back slightly and hummed, crossing his arms. “Well...Ray is planning on taking us all out when you get out of here.” he answered with a slight worried smile playing on his lips. “I was thinking we wait until your out of some of those bandages.”

Yeah like he could wait that long. “Dude, like I said I’m out of here tomorrow.” Reg smiled. “If someone doesn’t mind driving me home so I can get changed and grabbed my mask then I’ll be more than ready.” normally he would want Marcus and the others as far away from his place as possible, but unless he wanted one of his father’s gang members coming to the hospital and picking him up than he was willing to make this sacrifice.

“Your welding mask was...broken in the accident.” Marcus drew in breath through his teeth as his brows knitted together in worry. “Split in half when you hit the ground.”

Wrench’s jaw fell open at this, “Oh.” so That’s what happened to it, he had been wondering why he wasn’t wearing it when he got here; he’d almost thought he had left it home. Well he could just grab the proto-type he had at home.

“Besides, I think we’re going to like a bar or Hotel or something; so I don’t think they would be okay with masks anyway.” the hipster added, probably spotting how uneasy he had become. “As for the drive home, I’m betting My Mom wouldn’t mind giving you a lift.”

“Ye-Yeah, sounds good.” he nodded, not overly thrilled with the idea of going somewhere public Mask-less. God it would be like school all over again. Guess he wasn’t going to be overly chatty like he normally was with his mask on.

The two looked up as a gentle knock came to the door and a young nurse poked his head in. “I’m sorry for interrupting but it’s time for you X-rays.”

Wrench let sighed and rolled his eyes as he reached over for his crutches. “I swear they wait until I’m comfortable on this thing.” he looked to Marcus and tried to smile just a little. “You’ll be here tomorrow?”

“Of course Dude.” Marcus stood as well and gave him a quick pat on the back. “Now go get your picture taken.”

\-----

Marcus made his way towards the front desk where he planned to call his Mom.

He’d been glad to see Wrench up and moving about again, and was even gladder to see him in a pair of loose fitting PJ pants rather than the backless hospital gown. then again it had left his chest exposed leave the hipster to see the bruises and patches of road burn that covered his arms and torso. It was painful to see, he could only imagine how Wrench felt.

And he wasn’t lying when he said that Reg looking better then the last time he saw him. Then again the last time he saw him he had been lying unconscious after being hit by they project car. Those bruises had looked worse fresh and he hadn’t seen the road burn from under the blondes then ripped up sweater; and the way his leg refused to lay straight still made Marcus want to be sick.

Marcus could feel his heart race just thinking about what happened. He’d almost lost Wrench in one swift motion.

Once he got to the front desk he signed out and then pulled out his phone and quickly dialed his Mother. 

**“Hello?”**

“Hey Mom.”He greeted the moment his mother picked up her end.

**“Hey honey. How Wrench?”**

“Still pretty banged up but he’s moving around.” He answered. “He’s going in to get X-Rays now so I had to leave.”

**“Poor thing, well glad to hear he’s doing a bit better. You want me to come get you?”**

“Yeah, that would be great Mom.” he smiled a bit.

**“On my way. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”**

“Oh, by the way. Wrench is being released tomorrow, can we drive him home?”

**“Of course we can, I have tomorrow off so we can go first thing in morning.”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a bit to set up. but I think it works.  
Anyway time for the part were I say there are probably going to be some spelling errors or grammar errors, I try to get as many as I can in post.  
and of course as always thank you for the hits, Kudos and comments, I love them all and they really do mean a lot. I'll do my best not to disappoint.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus and Wrench finally get to see the newest Cyberdriver trailer and the teens meet on the beach for bonfire  
also warned, there may be under age drinking

“Yo Wrench, you fall asleep up there or what?” Marcus called from his spot on the couch, the dude had limped up the stairs a while ago to go get changed into some real clothes leaving him with the TV on.

“Give me a freakin minute!” the Blonde yelled back. “It takes me a little longer, thanks to this leg.”

Wrench’s house was both what he expected and nothing at all what he thought it would be. It looked like it was at one point a high-class home but now it kind of reminded him of the garage with just more furniture. In fact the couch he was sitting on looked like it was being held together by duct-tape and a prayer.

Marcus was about to call once more up the stairs when he was interrupted by the sound of an ad coming on.

**“In a World where technology is everything…”**

“Wrench! The new Cyberdriver trailer is out!” Marcus yelled with a hint of urgency added in his voice. “Hurry up dude! You're gonna miss it!”

**“I’m not looking for justice god damn it.”**

“Shit! I’m coming!” it was the quickest he’d ever heard someone limp around, as he assume Wrench was hurrying towards the stairs.

**“One man prowls the information superhighway in search of Cyberjustice.”**

“Dude, it’s starting.” Marcus kept looking from the screen to the stairs.

**“I’m looking for Cyberjustice.”**

“Ow, ow, ow.” Wrench was quickly coming down the steps trying to pull a Tee-shirt over his head while holding a rather spiky vest. 

**“A simple line of code could devastate the whole world.”**

“Don’t hurt yourself, man.” he turned to look fully at the blonde as he made his way to the couch. “You just got out of the hospital.”

**“It’s gonna be a cyber-tastrophy.”**

“I’m fine!” the blonde finally took a seat on the couch and pulled his shirt on.

**“CyberDriver.”**

They watched with both amusement at how far their favorite actor had fallen and raising annoyance as they watched a blue car drive across the screen.

**“Hit him with the code flurry, CHIP!”**

“Don’t trailers take time to you know...make?” Marcus asked glancing over at Wrench. “And didn’t they just start shooting that movie?”

**“Jimmy Siska is…”**

“I don’t know about you, but this looked like it was shot and edited in a day.” the blonde leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “So either they had a car all along and where trying to get a cheap back up or something. Or they backed out of the contest and bought the car from the space company like they were originally going to.”

**“Got no choice, Kiddies. Follow me, or die.”**

“Hold on I’m looking it up.” Marcus quickly pulled out his phone and started to type in the search for the contest. “Are you Kidding me?”

**“…Deven Von Deven.”**

“What is it?” Reg leaned over to see that was on his phone.

**“We gotta get these hackers somewhere safe.”**

“They announced that the contest was cancelled two hours after the accident happened!” Marcus did the math in his head again and realized he was correct. Wrench hadn’t even been off the ambulance for more than two minutes before they called a press conference to announce this.

**“They’re not hackers, Deven. They’re just script Kiddies.”**

“What?” now the engineer was practically sitting in his lap as he stared at the tiny screen. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

**“Hey! The car answered.”**

“No dude, listen.” he scrolled down a bit and started to read the statement. “We at Hook Motion Studios are sorry to announce that we must cancel our Cyberdriver contest. Not to long ago we were informed of a student being severely injured by one of the entry cars.” he paused to take a breath. “At this time we feel it would be disrespectful to the victim and their family to continue with this contest. Instead we have chosen to go with the car Designed by Galilei. So filming may continue.”

**“This ain’t your Momma’s smart car.”**

Wrench snorted and pulled on his spiked vest with a huff. “Basically ‘Something bad happened so we’re jumping ship as fast as possible.” the blonde crossed his arms over his chest. “This all seems a little convenient for my liking. couldn't even wait for me to get X-Rays done.”

**“I think next time we’re gonna need a higher firewall pal.” **

“You think someone set us up?” Marcus asked as he looked up from his phone.

**“CyberDriver!”**

“I’m not a big conspiracy guy...unless it’s for TV shows, but something just doesn’t feel right.” Wrench moved back to his own seat and leaned back into the cushion as the trailer ended. “Not that it really matters; Nothing we can prove unless we break into HMS.” the blonde reached over to the coffee table and grabbed his laptop and mask. “For all we know someone just posted a tweet about it while it happened and they got to work on removing themselves from the problem.”

“Yeah, and I don’t think we’ll be doing that anytime soon.” The hipster just let out a chuckle watching as the punk started working on the mask. “My Mom would kill me if I broke into there.” the blonde just laughed at that and continued his work. “But I gotta agree with you, this whole thing does sound a little fishy.” it did seem a little to convenient for Marcus’s liking as well. He tried to think back to that day to try and see if he recalled anyone on their phone, but the only one he recalled was Sitara and she had been the one calling an ambulance. 

“So when's Ray picking us up?” Wrench swiftly changed the subject as he glanced away from his work.

Marcus looked back at his phone for a moment before answering. “Probably in a little bit.” he looked back over at the blonde. “That what your wearing? Isn’t this like a party or something?”

“What are you talking about? This is the Nicest thing I own, M.” Wrench answered jokingly, or at least Marcus thought he was joking. “It also serves a purpose.”

“And that purpose is?” he raised an eyebrow at this.

“Much like the hedgehog or porcupine using spines to keep clear of predators, this vest shall keep people from bumping into me…” Wrench explained before just giving a shrug. “Besides, It's one of the few things that looks good on me with or without the mask.” 

He looked over at the spike covered vest, that looked like it might have been a leather jacket at one point; taking in the added spikes, pins, meme patch and the black and red happy face with X’d out eyes patch that was one the back. “Well It does suit you,and look good on you.” he wasn’t about to argue with Wrench about his lack of self confidence when it came to his looks.

\-----

What was Ray thinking, letting Frewer make reservations to anyplace? The guy couldn’t even make it to his own class on time. Not only had the man lost their time slot, but the place didn’t even allow anyone under the age limit inside the doors after Five pm. Still the resulting screaming match between the two had been more than with it for a little while, as it was always a little funny to watch the two go at it like an old married couple.

In the end the resulting Plan B had been a bonfire at the beach. Ray leaving the teens to go get some refreshments, as he put it, and uttering the words ‘you kids start a fire’ had almost made Wrench double over laughing. 

With a fire going they all sat around it while waiting for Ray to return, talking about all that had happened since the accident.

“So I got an email yesterday.” Horatio sighed looking down into the flames. “Turns out that I’m off the student council. Not that I’m overly surprised by that, think Goodale was just looking for a reason to get me kicked off.” he picked up a twig from the sandy ground and tossed it into the flames. “At least I don’t have to play nice with that piece of shit again.”

“Yeah, but it sucks that they kicked you off for all this; man.” Marcus sighed, patting the other teens arm.

** _“Yeah, dude. You were probably the best SC Rep we could have had.”_ ** Wrench chipped leaned back onto his arms. He had put his new mask on the moment it became clear they weren’t going to a bar. ** _ “You ran that club more than I ever did.” _ **

“Thanks, guys” the third year just rubbed at the back of his head. “But they were just waiting for me to slip up, and even though this suspension wasn’t really our fault; they don’t see it that way.”

“At least you might still get to go to the same School after all this.” Sitara chimed in. “My parents are trying to get me to transfer to another private school.” She tossed a rock off into the water as if trying to show her frustration. 

** _“Is there even one around here that you're not expelled from?” _ ** Wrench turned towards her an eyebrow raised, not that anyone could see it pass the mask but if the new program he added was working than the screen should be displaying a pair of question marks.

“My parents wanna pay one of the other schools to let me back in.” the Artist replied with a huff as she rolling his eyes.

“Wait. your parents can just pay to get an expulsion removed?” Marcus seemed surprised by this and it left him wondering if maybe they didn’t explain just ‘How’ rich Sitara’s parents were.

** _“Yeah Dude. Sitara’s parents are like Scrooge Mcduck rich.”_ ** Wrench filled him in. ** _“Their that old money, They could burn Money for warmth and still be rolling in cash.”_ ** their fathers actually knew each other, though he wasn’t really sure how well.

“Damn girl.” The Hipster hissed through his teeth.

“Yeah and for some reason they think it gives them the right to control my life.” Sitara growled out and brought her knees up to her chest and sighed. “Kinda like everything else happening here. Everyone with money is trying to control someone.” she rested her chin on her arms and turned to Josh. “What about you, honey?”

“My mom is thinking about taking me out of school altogether.” Josh answered just staring into the fire. “She doesn’t think the school has the resources to school me.”

“She hasn’t been on those Speaks-” 

“No” Josh interrupted Sitara before she could finish. “Though ads for them do come up on her !nvite account sometimes.” he shook his head twice. “I won’t know for sure until after the suspension has been lifted.” he suddenly looked at Wrench. “And you? What did the doctor say?”

** _“My lower back is pretty messed up, and my leg is in a soft cast for the next few weeks.” _ ** He explained trying to adjust the way he was sitting, it was awkward to always have one leg forcibly stretched out in front of him while having the other leg lay how he wanted it. ** _“Said ‘as long as I don’t over do it and take it easy then I should be fine.’ otherwise I could end up limping for the rest of my life.”_ ** But it wasn’t like he was getting into fights everyday or running from the cops or anything fun like that.

“I should have Killed the car the moment Marcus seemed confused about something.” Josh started to berate himself but now it was his turn to be cut off.

** _“Josh, don’t. I already told Marcus to Shut the Fuck up about it, so now I’m telling you.” _ ** he rested a hand on Josh’s shoulder, knowing for a fact the other wasn’t a fan of prolonged contact. ** _“Besides, you have no Idea how many times I was told how ‘Lucky’ I was by doctors and Nurses.” _ ** Josh pulled away from his contact just like he knew he would. ** _“It’s not, it’s called I only put some much gas in the car. It’s amazing it got enough speed to do this much damage.” _ ** He glanced about the group, so far stories had all been pretty grim; kicked off the student council, getting sent to private school by parents, getting taken out of school to be home-schooled. ** _“Does anyone have any like, I don’t know, Good News?”_ **

“Not me.” Marcus answered, grunting as he sat up right. “Been losing sleep about all this. Just keep thinking about what could have happened.”

“I think we all have been thinking about that.” Sitara added giving the hipster a smirk. “Really doesn’t help that the studio jumped ship so quickly and got that other car.”

“Yeah.” the Hipster nodded in agreement. “But I guess it’s just not a mystery we can solve.”

He loved Marcus, as a bro of course, but that had not been the good news he wanted; it was just more of what they had talked about back at his house. And unless they wanted him to get up to find a chair to throw, he was done talking about that for the next little bit. Wrench looked around again and spotted JB looking tentatively off to the side, it was odd the rat boy was this quiet. ** _“Yo JB! You’ve been quiet over there for a while!” _ ** he called for the other masked boy's attention, watching as Jay seemed to jump at the sound of his modulated voice. He must have really been in a daze. ** _“Tell us Mickey Mouse, anything good come from this or did the accident Fuck you like a cheap whore like it did everyone else?”_ **

The glowing face of JB’s rat mask turned to face him and the other teen seemed to fidget a little before answering. **“W-well something good did kind of happen.” ** he stuttered a bit, odd since Jay so rarely did that let alone with his mask on. **“I don’t think it really has anything to do with accident, but My Brother did finally get transfer to a better facility.”**

“hey, that is pretty good News.” Sitara spoke as he looked towards the rat masked boy and everyone seemed to brighten just a bit. 

“Yeah, dude. Hope you Brother does better.” Marcus chipped in with a smile.

Just like how the group was aware that Sitara’s parents were well off, the group also knew about Jay’s brother and his struggle with mental illness; needing to be under constant watch from healthcare professionals. Even Marcus knew of this. so this was a great surprise for all of them.

** _“Tell your brother we all say ‘Hi’ next time you go see him at his new place.” _ **The blonde add. 

**“Fuck you, Wretch!” **JB looked away quickly, Wrench figured he was embarrassed by the whole situation, not used to the others being this happy for him. Unless something else was eating him, Sand in unwanted places maybe?

** _“Anyone else go any Good News?” _ ** He tried again, looking from one teen to the next. ** _“Anyone other then JB?”_ **

“Anyone get any Puppies, see any Nice flowers, Just have a good day?” Marcus urged as well, it seemed like the doom and gloom was getting to him as well. Though Wrench disagreed about the puppies. 

“It’s not a Puppy, But I got some good news.” they all turned to see Ray walking towards them with a box of something in his hand. Coming to sit between Marcus and Horatio Ray sat down the box and Popped open the lid. “Now if you all promise ta not go telling your parents about this… you can have some.”

Wrench leaned forward to try and get a better look at the label and almost let out a squeal.** _ “Oh Fuck Yeah! Old man came through for us!”_ ** he had a hard time containing his excitement as Ray tossed him the first bottle.

“Just because I know you don’t ‘Have’ anyone to tell.” Ray stated before starting to hand out the other bottles, only Josh asked for a Soda.

“If My Mom, fines out I had even one of these, she’d kill us both.” Marcus looked at the Bottle as if the liquid inside was pure poison. And he probably wasn’t too far off.

** _“We can all sleep it off at the Garage.” _ ** Wrench quickly removed the cap to his bottle, but before he could lift his mask to take a drink; the others held out their bottles as they silently begged him to do the same for them. ** _“For fuck sakes.” _ **of course he obliged. 

Once everyone seemed comfortable and ready to try a real drink, Marcus held his bottle up for a toast. “Despite everything that happened, and Everything that Might happened. We’re in it together.” the group followed suit, bringing their bottles together and letting them clink before pulling a part and taking a group gulp…

Only for most of the group to spit the liquid out the moment it hit their tongues, almost causing the fire to grow bigger from the alcohol.

“God, man. That is nasty!” Marcus managed to choke out as he looked over at Wrench who seemed to be the only one in their age group, other then Josh, to be fine. “How are you even drinking that stuff?”  
  
** _“Beer is what is called an Acquired taste, try taking sips.” _ **he tried not to laugh at the others, since he hadn't been much different his first time almost a year ago when he first broke into his father’s liquor cabinet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm kind of glad I took my time with this one, it probably took me more tries than I'd like to admit to get this one just the way I like it. the next chapter my take me a bit of time too.  
Anyway, thank you for being patient with me, and for the comments, Kudos and just for reading this story; it means a lot.  
and sorry for any spelling or grammar errors, I try to catch as many as I can.  
(Edit): took out a large chunk that was left over from an old draft, after someone in the comments point it out that it was still there. :). should me better now.


	14. chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continues where the last chapter left off.

Marcus just sat there on the sandy beach sipping his beer and staring into the fire as the setting sun turned the skies a pretty aray of reds and purples. 

This whole thing was supposed to be a party and yet things had been pretty gloomy with them all, no doubt the weight of everything that had happened weighing on them all; killing any thoughts of joy.

At the moment it was just himself, Josh, Horatio, Ray and Frewer left on the beach. A while ago Sitara had got up to go for a walk and elbowed Wrench until the blonde agreed to go with her; and JB had gotten up to get something from Ray’s bus and had yet to return.

He’d thought his first beer would be a bit more exciting than this.

“Are you gonna just sit there and moap all night?” Marcus finally looked away from the fire and towards the older man sitting next to him.

“Wasn’t planning on it. But it’s just the way things are right now, hard not to think about all that happened.” The hipster sighed as he lazily looked at Ray. “Don’t mean to be such a Bummer.”

“Boy! There’s no point in worrying about things you think you can’t change, unless you’re planning on changing them.” the old teacher took another long swig from his bottle.

Marcus rolled his eyes and set down his now empty bottle. “Well it’s not like I can just forget it happened. Wrench got hit, everyone got suspended for it, and HMS ran and bought another car from Galilei before Wrench was even off the ambulance. We think something is up but there’s no real connection other than a company jumping ship and a few bad feelings.”as much as he hated the fact that he drew the attention of Josh, Horatio and Mr Frewer, Marcus had to admit ranting about it made him feel a little better. Though the beer might have loosened his lips a bit.

“You’re not looking at the whole picture.” Ray seemed unbothered by his tirade and just stared at the fire in front of them. “So Riddle me this. Galilei makes a car for HMS, but ….let's say the car was just too expensive… and HMS makes this contest for a cheaper option. Galilei would want the contest canceled but can’t do it openly without receiving back-lash if they're caught. So-” The old programmer took a long gulp from his bottle and looked over at the faces of his Students. “-Tell me, What was the truly odd thing that happened the day of the test?”

“The Car just took off.” Horatio gave the most obvious answer and yet Ray just shook his head.

Marcus tried hard to recall all that had happened that day, but everything seemed to be such a blur that he wasn’t sure of anything. He remembered being nervous, Wrench walking down the parking lot. The car starting and then took off, the sickening sound of the first hit followed by the sound of him thumbing as he rag dolled over the car until his welding mask hit the ground with a clang.

“Dusan Nemec was there.” Josh’s voice cut through Marcus’s thoughts like a warm knife through butter.

“Exactly.” Ray gave a nod to confirm it was the correct one. 

That’s right, he had forgotten that Nemec had been there; but why? They were a small school and it hadn’t even been a finished product yet so why go to look at it. Why come to the school at all? And now that Marcus was thinking about it, the man had barely reacted to Wrench being hit; sure he had run up to help but he’d been the calmest one there amidst the chaos. Almost like he had expected it. “But why would Dusan Nemec want to cancel the contest so HMS could buy the car from Galilei?” The hipster voiced his thoughts looking back at Ray. 

“Good question.” the teacher mused as he leaned back, looking from the fire up to the stars. “Why would the CTO of Blume help a space company unless they have something he wants...might have something to do with his ctOs 2.0 coming out soon.” 

This was all starting to sound like they had stumbled upon a huge conspiracy that was happening around them...no that wasn’t right, Marcus thought as he gave his head a shake. This was all Starting to sound like they had been used as pons to set in motion one big conspiracy be forced beyond their control.

“Even if this was true” Horatio spoke up looking at Ray. “We don’t have any way to prove anything. And No ones gonna believe us.” 

And they were once more back a square one, just with more pieces to a puzzle they couldn’t finish. 

“As long as you play by their rules. You’re Right.” There was a smile playing on Ray’s bearded face as he agreed with the third year. “Unless you find your own rule book to play by”

It was enough to grab Marcus’s attention. Playing by their own rules, huh?

“Ray! I know what you’re doing! Don’t go planting thoughts into their minds!” Frewer scolded the other man before looking back at students around him; clearly knowing that the old man was up to something. “Don’t pay him any mind! He’s just messing around.”

“Well you kids think on what I said.” Ray said as he started to stand up.

“Don’t think on it!”

“And let me know if you might be interested in ol ’T-Bone’s after school rule-breaking course.” Ray laughed a bit at the other teacher trying to stop him. “I’m gonna get me another Beer.”

“Don’t listen to him! He’s just drunk and full of shit. You do not want him to drag you down whatever rabbit hole he’s trying to take you down.” Frewer looked about the students nervously as he tried to repair whatever damage his friend...no Co-worker… had just done. “Just finish up your suspensions and move on with your lives. It’s for the best, trust me on this.”

‘Yeah’ Marcus thought ‘like they could just move on after being set up like that’. still what Ray was suggesting sounded a lot like breaking the law and he wasn’t sure if he was willing to go that far just yet.

But at least there was some hope now.

\----

** _“So… how goes it with your street artist friends?_ ** ” Wrench asked as he adjusted his mask, waiting for the light to change so they could cross. His mask still needed work, he could still feel the wires and circuit board through the cloth on the inside; and it was scratching at his skin.

“Hmm..” Sitara looked up from the cake that was probably starting to chill her fingers to look at the punk next to her. “Oh, good I guess.” she rolled her eyes slightly before continuing. “Wish they cared more about the message we’re trying to send and less about trying to sell t-shirts.” Around the same time the robotics club had started, Sitara had fallen in with a group of street artists and had been juggling the group and club up until a few days ago. 

** _“So you're planning on going solo?”_ ** the engineer continued to fill the silence. Sitara had dragged him away from the others to go with her to pick up an ice cream cake in hopes of lifting some of the gloom off the rest of the group. He had suggested using Marcus’s belated birthday to try and shift focus, and this was what it got him. At least he would be able to throw the party he wanted...sort of… well at least there was cake and beer.

If Ray wasn’t drinking them dry already.

“It’s tempting, but I don’t really have my own thing I can fall back on right now; and I guess they are teaching me how to move through the city in a new way.” Sitara sighed watching the cars as they continued to drive by. “Besides, with everything going on they might end up as my only reprieve from my parents trying to pull my strings.”

Now that was something he could understand.  ** _“At least parents are trying to be subtle about it.”_ **

“I’d probably die if my parents did what your dad did to you...like no wonder you have issues with being watched.” He and Sitara had known each other since they had been kids, their fathers had done business together after all. “He’s still in jail, right?”

The light finally changed, allowing the two teens to cross the busy street.

** _“Yeah, through sometimes it feels like he’s still-”_ **

Wrench was suddenly cut off as a large eighteen wheeler floored it passed them and through the light, mere inches away from making the two of them roadkill.

** _“THE LIGHT IS RED ASSHOLE!”_ ** the punk cursed after the truck, flipping the driver off for good measure crossing.

The moment they were on the opposite sidewalk from where they started, Sitara had to stop to take a moment to slow her heart rate. “Fucking asshole could have killed us!” she yelled as she glared after the truck that was now pulling into a parking lot just a little bit farther away.

** _“Jeez, I get hit once, survive, then I almost get run down again! Do I have a target on my back or something?!”_ ** Wrench could hear his heart pounding in his ears from the experience and his back was paining from being forced to run the rest of the way across the street.

“Well if it happens again, then I’m never going anywhere near you ever again.” the artist laughed before turning to look at the punk, thumbing at the lot the truck had pulled into. “But for now...why don’t we go find out what the rush was all about.”

The lot the truck pulled into belonged to an old abandoned building that hadn’t seen anyone aside from the group of teenagers or homeless in years, up until now. Now the place was crawling with people, guards in brown and red uniforms that made Wrench’s skin itch, now swarmed around the truck and immediate area the moment the truck pulled in.

One such guard approached Sitara and Wrench as they got too near. “You two can’t be here. It’s private property. Move along.” He waved his hand at the teens, as if trying to dismiss them.

** _“Private Property?”_ ** Wrench echoed with a tone of disbelief that leaked through his mask.  ** _“This place has been abandoned for years. The city owns it.”_ **

“Not anymore. It was bought recently. Move along.” the guard seemed to be eyeing up the masked teen, well trying to get them to leave.

“Well that truck right there...nearly ran me and my friend over.” Sitara jumped in with the issue at hand. Her tone dripped with a sarcastic venom. 

“Maybe you and your friend shouldn’t have been playing in the street. Move along.”

“He ran a red fucking light and we were in the crosswalk!” the artist’s voice went from sarcastic to full blown angry at the accusation. 

“Is there a problem here?”

The range of emoticons on his mask was limited so far and there was a slight delay in the change; so no one saw Wrench as he rolled his eyes as another guard in the same shitty uniform approached. Dear God they were multiplying.

What would he even use as an eye roll? Maybe an @ sign?

“Damn straight we have a problem!” Sitara looked like she was just about ready to pop this guy nuts like ripe grapes. “This guy thinks it’s okay for Drivers to run down teens in the streets!” with all that had happened the past few days she had probably been looking to just go off on someone, and these two just happened to set her off.

“These two brats are refusing to leave.”

“What did you just call us?!”

“I’m sorry but you have to leave.”

“We don’t have to do anything. We’re on the sidewalk. Or did your boss buy that too.”

Wrench was quickly losing track of the conversation as it became clear that they were gonna lose this battle. So rather than continue to fight he started looking for anything they could use for retaliation later. Looking passed the guards and towards the truck, using the fact no one could see his eyes as he tried to find a name on the eighteen wheeler.

He didn’t have long to look as he saw one of the guards reach for something on their belt. Time to stop Sitara, he got what they came for anyway.

** _“Hey Sitara, why don’t we forget about these knuckle draggers and head back to the beach before the cake melts._ ** ” he tossed an arm over her shoulders and tapped the top of the cake cover that was still in her hands. He really didn’t give her much choice as he turned them both away from both of the guards and forced her to support some of his weight.  ** _“Let’s go before they call the cops or shoot us.”_ ** he hissed in her ear more quietly.

Sitara huffed a little but conceded, allowing herself to be guided away from the guards and the parking lot.

The moment they were well out of ear shot the artist finally broke the silence with a sigh. “Guess I overdid it, huh?” she shrugged his arms off as she looked into his visor. 

** _“Nah.”_ ** Now free of the artist, the punk found himself wishing he had brought his crutch with him to take the weight off his now paining leg as he limped alongside her.  ** _“Those idiots deserved to have hurricane Sitara happen to them. And I would have just let that happen too...but I wasn’t in the mood to add arrested by a bunch of assholes to my list of bad things that happened this week.”_ ** he laughed through the pain as he tried to get to the good news.  ** _“But...while you were ripping those guys a new asshole, I managed to spy with my little eye- a name on the side of the truck.”_ **

At that moment Sitara’s face brightened as she heard this. “Don’t keep me in suspense here. Who does it belong to?”

** _“Get this…”_ ** Wrench leaned in close.  ** _“It belongs to HMS. Hook Motion Studios.”_ **

“Seriously?” he’d never seen Sitara’s brows shoot up so fast.

** _“Yeah. Fucking us in all different directions it seems.”_ ** the punk nodded quickly and yet he was smiling under his mask.  ** _“So I’m gonna hack their site when I get home. You know give it the ol’ Wrench makeover. Won’t take the pain away but it’s better than sitting around doing nothing.”_ ** Hacking...was a bit of a pass time for him, something he did over the summer to entertain himself. It was nothing grand and he mostly just pursed cyber-attacks on websites, defacing them in ways he saw fit. He was pretty sure he could figure out other more impressive ways to hack things but he’d yet to find the time.

“Mmm.” Sitara glanced over her shoulder back at the lot. “Message me when you do it, I’ll make you some gifs you can use.” Based on the look on the artist's face, she wished they could do more.

And truth be told...so did he.

\-----

“Hey, We’re back!”

Marcus suddenly looked up as he heard Sitara’s voice call out, seeing her and Wrench walking back towards them, the punk carried something in his hands.

** _“And we brought cake!” _ ** The blonde called out, lifting up the try for all to witness, his mask going blank for several moments before blinking a part of happy carcats.

“We were starting to wonder where you guys were.” Horatio chuckled as Sitara took a seat next to him. “And what’s the Cake for?”

“We ran into a bit of trouble on the way back.” the Artist explained, leaned back on her arms. 

** _“Try 80,000 pounds of trouble.” _ ** Wrench limped around the group making his way back over towards his spot by Marcus.  ** _“Eighteen wheeler tried to take us out.” _ ** the engineer plopped himself back down next to the hipster, groaning a bit from moving around so much without his crutch. 

“Yeah, and get this…” Sitara added leaning forward a bit. “The Truck belonged to Hook Motion Studios.”

Seriously? They trying to finish us off or something?” Marcus glanced at the punk and then at Sitara, before looking back at the cake. “So what about the Cake?”

“Well…” the artist smiled again. “A little birdy reminded me we didn’t get to celebrate Marcus’s birthday together like we promised.”

** _“Tweet, tweet~” _ ** Wrench leaned forward and placed the cake tray on the hipster’s lap. “ ** _Happy Birthday, M!”_ **

“Happy birthday Marcus!” the other all chimed in as well.

Feeling the heat of a blush on his face, Marcus rubbed sheepishly at his next. “Aw thanks guys, you didn’t have to do this-”

** _“Well too bad we did anyway.” _ ** Wrench clapped a hand on his shoulder as he cut him off.

Slowly Marcus lifted the lid and looked down at the cake that was pretty much melting in his lap, whatever was written on it was no longer readable. But it was still enough to make him smile and even laugh. 

** _“Oh Wait!” _ ** Wrench suddenly reached inside his vest and pulled out a pack of matches, lighting about three of them and sticking them in melting cake.  ** _“Make a wish dude.”_ **

This made Marcus laugh just a bit harder. “Do I even want to know why you have those?” he received no answer but it was something he had come to expect from the punk. Quickly he blew them out before the fire had time to melt the cake any more and the other’s cheered once more as the flames were blown out.

As childish as it was he wished for a way to change thing and get back at those that had hurt them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I'm back. hopefully people are still interested in reading this AU, cause I have renewed interest in writing it. my Love for Watch Dogs 2 has been renewed.  
So hopeful you guys like this chapter.  
So I think I'm gonna make this a series, and just do each mission as it's own part. 
> 
> Oh I also I went back and corrected some of the spelling mistakes, from past chapters and fixed up some things. so feel free to go back and check it out. you might find something new.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrench and Marcus decide to take Ray's offer, but they want to try and get Sitara to join them.

Marcus sat on his bed with his laptop open, blankly staring at the screen as he was completely lost in thought. Ever since the bonfire they had just a few days ago his mind had been on what Ray had said to them. He wanted to get back at the ones that had screwed them all over, but he wasn’t sure the others would go for it and at the same time he wasn’t sure he could do it alone.

His train of thought was suddenly interrupted as Discord blinked letting him know that someone had entered the voice chat.

It was Wrench.

Then again who else would it be. At the moment it felt like it was just the two of them now, as they were the only ones seeming to talk and hang out on a regular basis nowadays. 

Quickly Marcus joined the voice chat as well. He needed someone to talk this over with, and his best friend/crush/ seemed like the best possible choice right now.

“Hey Wrench.” He greeted as he entered the chat.

“Hey M.” the other responded quickly.

Marcus noticing that it didn’t hold the same robotic tone it held before. It was Wrench’s true voice, did he not have his mask on? “No mask today?” he figured he might as well ask.

“Nope, there was a short in one of the circuits.” there was a slight chuckle in the other’s words. “I’m working on it now. I figured I’d just go into the voice chat and maybe chat with you...or you know... someone. H-hope you don’t mind listening to me like this.”

“Dude, why the hell would I mind?” Marcus couldn't help but roll his eyes, even behind a screen, Reg was insecure about himself. “We talked all the time back in class, and when you helped me with my homework. I like your voice...both of them.”

The other teen was quiet for a long time, the only thing his mic was picking up was the sound of tools being set down quickly and the sound of a few shaky breathes.

“Dude, you still here?”

“Y-yeah.” Wrench finally came back, sounding slightly out of breath. “So-so what’s up, M? What’s on your mind?” the words seemed to tumble out of the other teen’s mouth.

And this was why he wanted to talk to Wrench, he just managed to get a smile on his face. “Nothing much...was just thinking about what Ray said, bout making our own rules.”

“You mean the Hacking thing?”

“Yeah.” the hipster nodded despite knowing that Wrench couldn’t see him do so. “I’ve just been thinking...they used us, hell even hurt us, just be nice to hit them back for once.”

“You’re thinking of taking Ray’s secret class?” 

Marcus sighed and looked up at his ceiling. Was he thinking about that? “I don’t know...maybe.” he looked back at the dark face of the messenger app. “I don’t know, I guess I’d just like to hurt them back...maybe see what...what was so worth using a bunch of kids and seriously hurting one of them.” he bowed his head a bit the smile had long slipped from his face, he was trying really hard to keep his voice low; he didn’t want his mom over hearing him. “But, I just don’t think I can do it alone, you know.”

Once more he could hear the sound of tools being set back down. “Well...you’re not alone man.” it was the most confident he had Heard Wrench sound without his mask on. “If you’re doing this...I’m with you.”

Well it wasn’t enough to raise his hope overly high, it was enough to bring a smile back onto his face knowing that Wrench had his back. “Thanks man, but do you really think the two of us plus Ray will be enough?”

“Sitara, might join us too...the others though…” Wrench paused in his thoughts. “Once we can prove we can do it...I’m sure they’ll join in as well.”

“You sound so sure…” 

“I’m like...I d-don’t know. I-I’m 85% sure.” Once more that insecure tone was coming back in the engineer’s voice, but it was enough to make Marcus wonder how long he could keep it away without his mask; maybe see if he could get Wrench to speak a bit more through Reg’s mouth. “I-It’s hard to tell sometimes with the others, but that’s still a lot in our favor.”

So Sitara might join them. The girl had drive. He'd give her that but would that be enough for her to join them, after all they wouldn’t just be out tagging walls and putting up posters.

“Think she would meet us somewhere tomorrow? It might be best if we all meet face to face and talk this over with her.” it was better than just messaging her and seeing her reaction in text form.

“I’ll-I’ll message her, later tonight and let you know what she says.”

**“Marcus! Supper!”**

“Sorry dude, I gotta go.”

“Yeah, no problem. See ya tomorrow..”

\---

**The next day**

“So I finally got around to re-watching the alien movies…” Marcus brought up, as he leaned back into the booth he was sitting in, eyeing the blonde sitting uncomfortably across from him. It had been an old conversation of theirs, that had been pushed aside after everything that happened. He just hoped Reg remembered. “I think I like the sequel better. So who would win between that alien versus Predator?”

“Th-that’s a pretty bold statement, Marcus. But I guess we have that conversation later.” Reg sighed as he stopped rocking back and forth to think the answer over. “The Cameron Alien is more aggressive so the Predator would know to stand his ground when the Xeno rushes him.” the blonde suddenly made a frustrated noise and his frown deepened. “But that’s like asking who wins between one zombie and one human, the aliens hunt in packs.”

It was interesting to watch, at least for Marcus it was. Watching as the lines that seemed to separate Reg and Wrench seemed to blur the more comfortable the other seemed to become; even without his mask. Every so often his stutter would pop up or Marcus would have a hard time reading Reg’s expression; but once you got to know the nervous wreck that was Reg then you soon realized that Wrench was his true face. 

And the only reason Reg had his mask off was because they were in a cafe waiting on Sitara and had already been warned by the owner; plus he was still working on the bug he had found last night while chatting with Marcus.

“So how many aliens would you need for it to be a fair fight?” He tried to keep the conversation going.

“Four.” clearly the other seemed to have the answer already on his lips before the question was even asked. “A single predator could probably easily hold off three...but a fourth one is gonna be able to get in close. Even if the Predator kills it, the splash from the alien’s acid blood would eat right through him.” the blond just shrugged. “It’s a hard call.”

The Hipster just had to laugh at this, Wrench was almost refusing to give an answer. “Well Alien took on Judge Dredd, that’s gotta count for something.” he tossed another statistic at the Engineer. “Ooh...Alien’s took on Batman.”

“So did Predator.” Reg leaned forward holding contact with Marcus’s eyes, something he rarely ever did. “Don’t forget Both Alien and Predator took on both Batman and Superman.”

Marcus could keep the smile off his face, it was as if the blonde didn’t even realize he wasn’t wearing his mask. “Really? Who won?” he honestly wanted to know, he had only heard of the comic.

Reg looked off to the side for a moment before, as if trying to recall what happened as well. “Can’t remember, doesn’t matter. Overall win goes to Predator.”

Finally an answer but if the punk thought he’d get away without explaining it after all that; he was sorely mistaken. “Okay, enlighten me.”

“Predator has taken on Archie…”

“So are you two nerds gonna make out or just keep flirting while you two keep the rest of us at the edge of our seats.” Both of them looked up and saw Sitara standing next to their table with a smile on her lips. “Cause right now, the only way you two could get cuter together was if you were a kitten and a puppy licking each other.”

With little warning Reg stood up and got out of the booth and started pushing past the artist. “I-i have to use the bathroom.” the blonde announced, pulling his hood up and walking towards the back of the cafe. 

The two watched him, glancing around realizing that the few other people in the restaurants had been glancing their way. 

“Oops.” Sitara spoke up, looking a bit guilty as she slipped into the both Wrench had left behind. “Guess that was a little much, but he was doing so well I thought he could handle it.” 

“Is he gonna be alright?” Marcus asked, tempted to go after the other but unsure if he should.

“Oh, yeah.” The artist nodded. “He’s probably gonna pull his mask on in one of those stalls and calm himself down.” Sitara turned and looked across the table at Marcus. “So what did you want to talk to us about?”

Draw back to the topic at hand and turned his eyes away from the bathroom where the blonde fled. Marcus let out a deep sigh. “Okay, so ever since the bonfire I’ve been thinking about what Ray said about Nemec...how it was more than possible he might be involved; cause like what the hell was he doing there to begin with.”

“Yeah but...what would he have to gain with screwing with us?” Sitara pointed out leaning into the table and resting her arms. 

“That’s what’s been eating at me.” Marcus glanced around and lowered his voice. “What would be so important that he needed to hurt a group of skins in some dead-ass public school?” he looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Makes you wonder what else he could be doing.”

Sitara went quiet as her gaze shifted off to the side as a thoughtful look fell over her face.

Choosing to give her a moment to think about it; Marcus looked back towards the men’s bathroom just in time to watch as the door was kicked open and Wrench to walk through, mask and all. No longer seeming to care that eyes were once more on him the punk walked back to the table and sat next to the hipster. ** _“Sorry that took so long...you tell her what you told me?” _ **the mask continued to display a pair of default X’s, no longer switching between the few icons installed, that must have been the bug he was talking about.

“Yeah.” the hipster nodded towards the artist. “Think she’s thinking it over now.”

Wrench leaned into the table a bit looking right at Sitara. ** _“Look Sitara, Marcus and I are thinking of taking Ray’s offer and start fighting back.” _ ** Wrench started adding his own two cents to Marcus’s argument, clearly feeling much more confident with his mask on. ** _“Maybe Start with HMS, see if we can’t find some kind of connection to Blume and if anything we at least hurt them for almost running us off that night.” _ ** the blonde looked over his shoulder quickly then back at the artist. ** _“Look, I don’t mean to rush you, okay maybe I do; but we’re probably gonna be kicked out when the owner comes back. so, you know…”_ **

Sitara looked back at both of them still looking a little unsure about all this. “I don’t know, we’d need a way to cover our tracks. Even if we just hit HMS.”

“Maybe we come off as a group...suggest we’re offended by the movie trailer.” Marcus shrugged, he’d been trying to avoid using any words like Hacking or anything that may give away what was being planned here. They were in a cafe after all. “I mean, if Ray is gonna teach us what I think he’s gonna teach us, it’s not like we’ll be lying. And it’s not like we’d be the only group like that here.”

The artist looked a little bit more into this when she did a few seconds ago. “No way, not like Prime_Eight. What about a Watchdog group? That way when we can do some real good with this if we find something.” she brought a hand up to her chin and thought hard, a smile spreading on her lips as her mind started to take off. “Hmm. we’ll need a name?...what was the name of that group from the movie?” She seemed to be picking on Marcus’s lack of use of curtain words.

Wrench and Marcus looked at each other and then back at the Artist. “Deathsec?” the hipster added quietly unsure if it was a wise idea to use the name from the movie.

“Really….no that won’t do.” Sitara shook her head. “What about the name you two lover birds had on your matching wire bracelets? Don’t say it just hold it up so I can see it.”

Wrench looked to the arm that he had his on, but all that was there was the wire wrapped around his arm. ** _“Think mine broke off after I was hit.”_ **

Marcus lifted his arm up and allowed Sitara to look at the small charm with the word DEDSEC circling a little skull.

Sitara’s smile spread a little further as she looked at it. “Yeah, I think I can work with this… and I just might have a space we can work in that has a bit more space then Wrench’s Garage.”

“So...I’m guessing you’re in?” Marcus smiled,trying to make sure the artist wasn’t fucking with them.

“Yeah i’m in.” Sitara grinned leaning back into her booth. “Besides, pretty sure the two of you will get yourselves arrested without help.”

“I don’t know about that.”

** _“You’re probably right.”_ **

Sitara had a cocky smile on her face as they all started to stand up after spotting the manager heading their way. “This is gonna be fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this one is shorter then the last. But Dedsec is starting to take from.  
Sorry if any of the spelling and grammar are off, I will go back at some point and fix anything I find.  
and thank you all for the kudos and just checking out this story. I hope not to disappoint.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was going to use the name of a school in San Francisco, but seeing as I don't live there and I'm sure someone would call me on that I just made one up. first few chapters are always awkward. still learning how to write these characters  
So hope you guys enjoy.


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